I was recently granted the opportunity to speak at the November 15th NYC WordPress Meetup about how the WordPress initialization, or “boot” process works. Almost 100 of my fellow ‘pressers turned out for the event. The presentation was adapted from my recent post on the same topic.
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I began learning about WordPress by building themes and reading through the multitude of awesome tutorials posted across the net. A lot was learned through trial and error, and a lot was learned from copying and pasting. However, there is one topic for which I have yet to find comprehensive information: the WordPress initialization process. I mean from start to finish, how does the WordPress core take the initial page request and give back such beautiful web pages? It’s time to take the plunge and actually step through the WordPress core, file by file, so I can get a better understanding of how our favorite personal publishing platform initializes itself and then displays my content, all of our content, for the world to see. I hope this post will serve not only as a place that I can return to as a reference but also as a place for all of you to turn to when you need a refresher on the inner workings of the WordPress core structure, or if you’re just starting out and need a better understanding of what WordPress is doing with your theme and your code. Let’s get started…

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