For anyone comfortable with HTML, CSS, and a minimal amount of PHP, WordPress is the easiest content management system to "get your hands dirty" with and start customizing beyond the options built into your theme and plugins. Customizing WordPress is also a great entry point to learning PHP and JavaScript.

We'll peek behind the curtain to see how WordPress processes a page request, dip our toes in the waters of action hooks and filters, dig into simple plugins and child theme page templates, cook up our own shortcodes, tinker around under the hood to modify the WP admin interface, and mix metaphors in other ways to get that "fully custom" look.

The goals of this session are to understand "what's possible" with customization without building from scratch, gain familiarity with the structure and coding patterns of WordPress template and other files, learn how to implement a Child Theme, learn where to look for hooks that afford customization and how to find documentation and help in using them.

Participants should be comfortable using FTP, the WordPress admin and writing HTML, and understand the fundamental programming concepts of functions and variables (specific knowledge of PHP is not necessary, but helpful).