WordPress Cheat Sheet for Developers (With Downloadable PDF)

A WordPress cheat sheet is the list of WP-CLI commands that developers often need, snippets for theme development, and other essential things related to WordPress. Suitable for beginners and experienced, this compilation of WordPress cheat sheets will save a lot of time and effort for developers at all levels.

In this article, we have compiled multiple cheat lists and also provided a printable PDF file of the cheat sheet for you to download and keep to use later.

Why Would You Need a WordPress Cheat Sheet

Remembering all the commands, shortcuts, and arguments that a WordPress developer needs in everyday work is tough. For WordPress developers, the number of things one has to remember is even higher. This is because not only do you have to know the regular programming shortcodes, but you also need to remember the WordPress-specific codes.

These are the most needed cheat sheets for WordPress developers.

1. Cheat Sheet for WordPress Themes
2. WP-CLI Cheat Sheet
3. WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts

Now we’ll continue with the list of WordPress cheat sheets.

A Complete List of WordPress Cheat Sheet

As we’ve mentioned above, we divided the cheat sheets into three parts. We’ll start with the cheat sheet for WordPress theme development.

Cheat Sheet for WordPress Themes

Remembering WordPress theme files and the complete anatomy is a major pain, right? Well, not anymore. Here’s the complete anatomy of a WordPress theme.

Now let’s talk about the WordPress theme files mentioned in the theme anatomy and what they are for.

• header.php – Header.php contains the information of the head section of your website. This includes website metadata, title, JS file script, and link to your CSS stylesheet.
• index.php – This contains the main body part of the website.
• sidebar.php – This contains the sidebar of the WordPress site. Mainly used by website owners to place widgets, and page/post categories, among others.
• footer.php – This is the footer section of the website. Used for entering any copyright mark, links to important pages, social icons, address, etc.
• page.php – This is the template that renders all the pages in WordPress.
• single.php – This template is used for single blog posts.
• comments.php – This is the template for comments.
• 404.php – This is the template for the error 404 page.
• search.php –  This is the template for the search result page on WordPress.
• searchform.php – This deals with the search form and feature.
• archive.php – This is the archive page template for blog posts.
• functions.php – This template holds all the custom functions and custom plugins. This is an important file to customize your website theme.
• style.css – Style.css is responsible primarily for styling the WordPress website (or any website for that matter).

WordPress Theme Definition

WordPress theme definition is the details of the theme that need to be included on top of the stylesheet of every theme. Below is the theme definition of Twenty Twenty-Two that you can customize.

/*
Theme Name: Twenty Twenty-Two

Theme URI: https://github.com/wordpress/twentytwentytwo/

Author: the WordPress team

Author URI: https://wordpress.org/

Description: Built on a solidly designed foundation, Twenty Twenty-Two embraces the idea that everyone deserves a truly unique website. The theme’s subtle styles are inspired by the diversity and versatility of birds: its typography is lightweight yet strong, its color palette is drawn from nature, and its layout elements sit gently on the page. The true richness of Twenty Twenty-Two lies in its opportunity for customization. The theme is built to take advantage of the Full Site Editing features introduced in WordPress 5.9, which means that colors, typography, and the layout of every single page on your site can be customized to suit your vision. It also includes dozens of block patterns, opening the door to a wide range of professionally designed layouts in just a few clicks. Whether you’re building a single-page website, a blog, a business website, or a portfolio, Twenty Twenty-Two will help you create a site that is uniquely yours.

Requires at least: 5.9

Tested up to: 5.9

Requires PHP: 5.6

Version: 1.0

License: GNU General Public License v2 or later

License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Text Domain: twentytwentytwo

Tags: one-column, custom-colors, custom-menu, custom-logo, editor-style, featured-images, full-site-editing, block-patterns, rtl-language-support, sticky-post, threaded-comments
Twenty Twenty-Two WordPress Theme, (C) 2021 WordPress.org
Twenty Twenty-Two is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.
*/

The Loop

The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display all your posts. Imagine the amount of code you’d need to display feature images, excerpts, and other information for all of the posts you have created on a page. Thankfully, the loop makes it easier to display them all. In a single piece of code.

<?php
if ( have_posts() ) :

	while ( have_posts() ) :

		the_post();

		// Display Post Content here

	endwhile;

endif; ?>

WordPress Template Tags

WordPress template tags are used to display information on your website dynamically. Here are the most needed WordPress template tags and what they do.

• the_content(); – Displays post content.
• the_excerpt(); – Displays the post excerpt.
• the_title(); – Displays the title of the post.
• the_permalink() – Displays the post link.
• the_category(‘, ‘) – Displays the category of a post
• the_author(); – Displays the post author.
• the_ID(); – Displays the post ID
• edit_post_link(); – Displays Edit link for a post
• next_post_link(‘ %link ‘) – Displays the next page URL
• previous_post_link(‘%link’) – Displays the previous page URL
• get_links_list(); – Retrieve blogroll links
• wp_list_pages(); – Retrieve all pages
• wp_get_archives() – Retrieve archive for the site
• wp_list_cats(); – Retrieve all categories
• get_calendar(); – Displays the the built-in WordPress calendar
• wp_register(); – Displays the register link
• wp_loginout(); – Displays the login or logout links
• (for registered users)

WordPress Include Tags

Include tags to help you add a template file to another template file. An example would be adding a header template to the index (homepage) template to make it easier.

Below are the WordPress include tags.

• <?php get_header(); ?> – This tag is used to insert the header.php file into another template.
• <?php get_sidebar(); ?> – This tag is used to insert the sidebar.php file into another template.
• <?php get_footer(); ?> – This tag is used to insert the footer.php file into another template.
• <?php comments_template(); ?> – This tag is used to insert the comments.php file into another template.

Bloginfo Tags

The bloginfo tags help you display the information from User Profile and Settings -> General to frontend of your website where you need it. These are the tags that help to display specific information.

• <?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> – This tag displays the title of your WordPress site
• <?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?> – This tag displays the URL of your blog
• <?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?> – This tag displays the tagline of your blog.
• <?php bloginfo(‘charset’); ?> – This tag displays the character set used to encode your site.
• <?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_url’); ?> – This tag displas URL to the CSS stylesheet of your current theme
• <?php bloginfo(‘version’); ?> – This tag displays the WordPress version that is being used
• <?php bloginfo(‘language’); ?> – This tag displays the language of WordPress
• <?php bloginfo(‘rss_url’); ?> – This tag displays URL for the RSS 0.92 feed
• <?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?> – This tag displays URL for the RSS 2.0 feed

WP-CLI Cheat Sheet

WP-CLI is the command-line interface for WordPress. You can update plugins, configure multisite installations, and much more, without using a web browser. Below are the most common command lines for WP-CLI.

Download WordPress

wp core download

Generate wp-config.php file.

wp core config --dbname=
--dbuser= --dbpass=
--dbprefix=

Install WordPress

wp core install --url="your_domain_name"
--title="Your Blog Title" --admin_user="admin"
--admin_password="your_password"
--admin_email="your_email"

Search plugin

wp plugin search yoast

Install plugin

wp plugin install pluginname

List plugins

wp plugin list

List installed themes

wp theme list

Search for new themes

wp theme search keyword

Install theme

wp theme install bootstrap-four

Activate theme

wp theme activate bootstrap-four

List posts

wp post list

Edit post

wp post edit 1

Post update

wp post update 1
--post_title="Your New title…"

Create posts

wp post create
--post_status=publish
--post_title="Second Post"
--edit

Login WordPress db

wp db cli

List WordPress users

wp db query "SELECT user_login,
ID FROM wp_users;"

Change WordPress post author

wp post update 6 --post_author=1

Optimize db

wp db optimize

Update WordPress

wp core update

Update WordPress DB

wp core update-db

Update all plugins

wp plugin update --all

WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts

Now let’s check out the most common keyboard shortcuts you can use on WordPress.

There are also some keyboard shortcuts specifically for the Gutenberg editor.

WordPress Cheat Sheet in Printable Format (PDF)

Want to download and store (or maybe print?) the WordPress cheat sheet? No worries, here is the cheat sheet in PDF format to store or download.

Wrapping Up

Developers are human beings, and humans need cheat sheets. A WordPress developer’s job is to use the great platform to build easy-to-use products for everyday users.

If you are a WordPress developer, or if you are just interested in learning to develop with WordPress, you will inevitably have to use some sort of cheat sheet. This can be as simple as a list of commonly used tags or a more comprehensive one. However, building one such cheat sheet is time-consuming. So we compiled a list to make your life easier.

We also provided downloadable and printable versions of the WordPress cheat sheet in PDF+JPG file format.