Top 22 WordPress Interview Questions For All Levels

Here are the most commonly asked WordPress interview questions that will be helpful for freshers and developers in companies that use the content management system.

WordPress is the most popular content management platform in the internet space. It started as a platform for bloggers and now allows users to create websites, eCommerce stores, mobile apps, and more. Knowing WordPress is not just necessary for all levels of professionals in digital marketing but also for developers. Find out the top 22 WordPress interview questions and answers for freshers and developers today. 

Q1. Describe WordPress. 

Ans. WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that started in 2003. Licensed under GPLv2 that allows anyone to modify for free, over 400 million websites use it. Some major organisations such as Microsoft, CNN, The New York Times, etc use it. It is a huge ecosystem with more than 50,000 plugins and themes, of which, many are free. 

For this fresher-level WordPress interview question, try preparing all the stats and figures related to the CMS to impress your recruiter. 

Q2. What are the basic features and advantages of WordPress?

Ans. Some basic features and advantages of WordPress include

• Ease of online publishing – formatting, scheduling, automatic saving, draft creation, previewing before publishing, etc., necessary for content marketing
• No coding knowledge is required to start with, and it is intuitive to set up
• Create multiple sites on WordPress
• Changing the templates of your website does not affect the content
• Password protection when a site has multiple users working on the CMS platform
• Massive community support on its forum
• Comment enabling and disabling, along with comment spam protection

Q3. Are there any limitations of WordPress?

Ans. Mention the following 

• For additional features like widgets and integration, there is no way other than installing more plugins. And, too many plugins and themes can slow down your website.
• While there are many free plugins and themes, not all may work for a website. For that, you have to buy them, which can become expensive.

Q4. Could you explain the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

Ans. The main difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is that the first is a service that uses WordPress software. In contrast, the latter, WordPress.org is the source where anyone can download the software. 

Try explaining the difference a little more so that your recruiter is able to gauge your understanding of it. 

In the case of WordPress.org, you can say that only registered domains and contracted servers can host their WordPress sites. In such cases, there are no limitations to using plugins and themes provided other than WordPress. 

For WordPress.com sites, the features are limited as the site does not have a contracted server or a registered domain. For instance, it is not possible to monetise a WordPress.com site with Google AdSense, which can be done in the other. Also, you can only use themes that are provided by WordPress. 

Q5. Define a WordPress plugin. 

Ans. A plugin is used inside applications to add functionality. Likewise, a WordPress plugin is used for integrating features for enhancing user experience and a variety of other purposes. For instance, for SEO purposes, there are plugins such as Yoast SEO. This plugin extends the ability to make your content SEO-friendly, giving you a readability and SEO score based on the content you write.

Explore SEO courses

Q6. Describe how you would install a plugin. 

To add any plugin to WordPress, you have to go to the Dashboard and click on Plugins options available on the left-hand side. You can then type on the search bar on the right-hand side to access the plugin repository. Click on Install after finding the plugin and then hit Activate. 

Q7. Name some of the best WordPress plugins. 

Ans. You can start with these while answering this WordPress interview question. Also, explain some features of them. 

• WooCommerce
• Yoast SEO
• Tablesome
• Wordlift
• Wordfence
• Gravity Forms
• RankMath
• Schema Pro
• PushEngage

Q8. What is the difference between posts and pages on WordPress?

Ans. Posts and pages are two content types on WordPress. Posts are blogs and articles on your site and on the WordPress dashboard the newest posts appear on top, while the older ones are at the bottom. Pages, on the other hand, are like those about pages on websites which do not get updated after publishing. 

Q9. What is a child theme on WordPress?

Ans. A child theme takes the features and functionality of a parent theme on WordPress. It cannot be independent of a parent theme. Developers can use the child theme for further modifications without affecting the code of the parent theme.

Q10. How do you customise a child theme?

Ans. You can customise in two ways. One is if you are using CSS and the other .PHP.

If you are using CSS, then it can be done by 

• Creating new folder on themes directory, giving the same name as the parent but with an additional name like child
• Creating a stylesheet file
• Enqueueing parent and child theme stylesheets, ensuring the child theme is loaded before the parent theme
• Installing the child theme and then activating it

Q11. Which database management system does WordPress use?

Ans. It uses MySQL that stores user data, user posts, etc. 

Q12. Which are the primary programming languages used on WordPress?

Ans. WordPress developers have to know at least four programming languages. HTML (HyperText Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), PHP (hypertext processor) and JavaScript. 

When answering this interview question, do explain what each of these languages are used for. For instance, you can mention that WordPress uses PHP code to display web pages in real-time and how updating the PHP version of your WordPress site is important to prevent cyberattacks. 

Q13. What are the current requirements for hosts to run WordPress?

Ans. These are the basic requirements

• PHP version 7.4 or higher. The current PHP version is 8.
• MySQL version 5.7 or higher
• MariaDB version 10.3 or higher
• HTTPS support

Q14. Which is more secure – WordPress.org or WordPress.com?

Ans. WordPress.com can be more secure than the other one because in this environment there is no support for external plugins or themes. 

Q15. What is a WordPress loop?

Ans. It is PHP code displaying WordPress posts. 

Q16. What is a template tag?

Ans. Template tags are a PHP function that work inside the loop. Some few template tags are 

• get_header()
• get_footer()
• get_sidebar()
• wp_login_url()
• get_calendar()

Q17. What are hooks in WordPress?

Ans. Hooks allow one piece of code to modify some other piece of code at specific spots. Simply put, a developer can use hook to change functionality without editing the WordPress core. There are two types of hooks 

• Action
• Filter

Q18. How many tables are in WordPress?

Ans. There are 11 tables. 

• Wp_options
• Wp_users
• Wp_links
• Wp_commentmeta
• Wp_term_relationships
• Wp_postmeta
• Wp_posts
• Wp_term_taxonomy
• Wp_usermeta
• Wp_terms
• Wp_comments

Q19. What is a WordPress importer?

Ans. It allows one to move data, including blogs, categories, etc., from one WordPress site to another. 

Q20. What is a shortcode in WordPress?

Ans. Shortcodes are represented by square brackets. They can be used for a variety of simple to complex purposes without resorting to HTML. 

Related: WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

Q21. Is it possible to host a WordPress website with Amazon Web Services?

Ans. Yes, by using Amazon Lightsail, the WordPress website can be started on a virtual server.

Q22. Why disable comments on WordPress, and how can you do it?

Ans. Comments can be time-taking to moderate and they create spam unless you have a security plugin installed.

To disable comments on WordPress, go to the section, Post, scroll down to the bottom and unselect the ‘Allow Comments’ option. Then hit the Update button.

Parting Thoughts

So these are the most commonly asked WordPress interview questions and answers for freshers and developers. Hopefully you can prepare better with these questions and ace your interview round!