Real-World Onboarding Series (Day 0) by an experienced WordPress technical support engineer

I recently joined a leading WordPress agency that provides structured onboarding for Support Engineers. These posts are inspired by the training steps from that process.

Why this series?

I’ve worked with WordPress for 10+ years as an engineer and support specialist.
I’m starting a focused, 14-day series to document how a professional WordPress Technical Support Engineer works from local setup and debugging to coding standards, security, and communication with clients.

It’s a real-world workflow you can follow to prepare for agency work, plugin/theme support roles, or high-quality freelance support.

Who is it for?

  • Developers moving into technical support
  • Support engineers who want a clean, repeatable workflow
  • Agencies onboarding new team members
  • Freelancers who handle WooCommerce / plugin conflicts and performance issues

What you’ll learn (14-day roadmap)

Day 1 – Setting up a reliable local environment and using debugging tools (WP-CLI, Query Monitor, logs)
Day 2 – WPCS & PHPCS: clean, review-ready code
Day 3 – Security basics: sanitizing, escaping, nonces, safe queries
Day 4 – WordPress Core overview: hooks, filters, plugin/theme loading order
Day 5 – WP_Query & request lifecycle: tracing issues the right way
Day 6 – Gutenberg & FSE: block troubleshooting, patterns, theme.json basics
Day 7 – Gutenberg deep-dive: common editor bugs & fixes
Day 8 – WordPress.com vs self-hosted: hosting realities, staging, backups
Day 9 – Performance mindset: caching, images, asset loading, Core Web Vitals
Day 10 – Top 10 support cases & how to triage fast (plugins, themes, PHP versions)
Day 11 – Communication & tickets: reproducible steps, summaries, hand-offs
Day 12 – Week 1 recap: what to keep, what to automate
Day 13 – Week 2 recap: block editor, performance, workflows
Day 14 – Final checklist & resources to keep improving

How to use this series

  • Read a day, apply it on a test site, and keep short notes.
  • Save commands and snippets into your own knowledge base.
  • Share with teammates, this doubles as a mini onboarding guide.

What you’ll need

  • A local WordPress install (Local, DevKinsta, or similar)
  • Basic Git knowledge (optional)
  • A text editor (I use Notepad++ )
  • Access to a staging site (optional but helpful)

My promise

I’ll keep each day short, practical, and written in simple English.
You’ll get clear steps, tools, and checklists that you can reuse in real client work.

Next post: Day 1 – Setting Up a WordPress Support Environment & Debugging Like a Pro.

What I learned today

Even with years of experience handling WordPress support, Day 0 reminded me of the value of a structured onboarding process.

It helped me see the bigger picture about how having a defined learning path, clear expectations, and a step-by-step plan builds consistency across a support team and communication can provide references and resources to make support faster, more reliable, and easier to scale in a team setting.


Laying this foundation before jumping into technical setup ensures that everyone speaks the same language, follows the same standards, and can scale their workflow efficiently later on.