What is WordPress? – Complete Guide
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source (CMS) content management system that enables you to easily create and manage a website without being a web developer.
WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, used by millions of people including business owners, bloggers, publishers, individuals, and more to maintain their online presence every day.
WordPress is simply a piece of software built to make it easy for individuals without technical knowledge to create their websites easily from a simple dashboard. You can create new website pages, blog posts, edit your website appearance, and more with a few clicks.
WordPress is free to use. There are no setup fees to have WordPress information, with thousands of themes available to create amazing-looking websites. It’s one of the best ways for businesses and individuals to create fully customized websites.
WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. It’s powering 63% of the worlds’ websites whose content management system – CMS.
What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
When you search the word ‘WordPress’, you will find two different websites, WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Let’s find out what is the difference between them:
- WordPress.org also called self-hosted WordPress among the people, is the free, open-source WordPress software that you can install on your web hosting server to create a website on your domain with it, 100% free.
- WordPress.com is a paid service made for profit, powered by the WordPress organization, It is also simple to use, but you may lose some of the flexibility of the open-source self-hosted version of WordPress.
If you want to truly own your website, the open-source self-hosted WordPress version is the best option for you. In most times, when people say “WordPress” they mean the self-hosted version that’s available on WordPress.org or that you’ll find on your cPanel for example.
All you need to get started with the free open-source self-hosted most used WordPress version is to purchase a web hosting plan and a domain name, after that you will be a few clicks and a few seconds to put your WordPress website online.
A Brief History of WordPress
WordPress is open-source software,
WordPress was first created back in 2003 as a previous project called b2/cafe log, as WordPress is open-source software which means it’s made by a large community of contributors. But if we want to know the first start of WordPress from its roots, it was originally created due to a collaboration between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.
Since that, Matt Mullenweg has become the face of the WordPress organization, and he is the founder of Automattic which is the company behind the for-profit WordPress.com service as we mentioned.
What Kind of Websites can you create with WordPress?
Years ago, WordPress was primarily created as a tool for creating a blog, not traditional websites, but all of that changed due to the changes in its core code. Thanks to the WordPress’s massive ecosystem of themes, plugins, widgets, and more, you can now build any type of website with WordPress with that great ecosystem.
For example, you can create with WordPress:
Business Websites
Portfolio Websites
Blogs
eCommerce Websites
Forums
eLearning Websites
Galleries
Q&A Websites
Social Networks
Membership Websites
Resumes Websites
Presentational Websites
Almost any type of website you can dream up with…
Who Uses WordPress?
WordPress powers 35% of all websites on the internet as we mentioned, and all business types from small companies to corporations, individuals, and everyone else in between. Also, as a note, we use WordPress! So, all of our blog that you’re looking at right now is powered by WordPress. A lot of other well-known organizations use WordPress. Here are some of them:
- Whitehouse.gov
- Microsoft Blog
- BBC America
- cPanel Blog
- The New York Times
- Mercedes-Benz
And More…
Why Should You Use WordPress?
There are many reasons to use WordPress, but here are the biggest:
WordPress is Open Source and Free
One of the most important benefits of WordPress is that it’s open-source, free software, even if you need to pair it with a little amount of money for web hosting. Still, you will never have to pay for using WordPress, and as it’s open-source software, so you’ll find a lot of open-source plugins and themes to change how your website looks and functions.
WordPress is Easy to Install
If you think you need to be a tech genius or to be an experienced web developer to create your own website! Well, then think again! As you can with a couple of clicks install WordPress on your site.
WordPress is Customizable
Even if you are not a web developer or don’t have a web developer in your team, you will be able to easily edit and create a 100% customized website thanks to WordPress’s massive ecosystem of themes and plugins.
Themes are the primary look of your website.
Plugins are how your website functions, for example, a contact form, SEO helper plugin, and more.
There are thousands of WordPress themes and plugins, so you have thousands of choices to make a fully customized functioning website on your own with a few clicks thanks to the great massive WordPress ecosystem!
Easy to Find Help with WordPress
Because of WordPress’s popularity, it’s very easy to find help with it if you ever got stuck in anything. There are many types of help blogs, tutorials, forums, groups, developers, videos, and more.
So, what will you build with WordPress? We can’t wait to find out!
Congratulations you have passed the first step to be a WordPress expert.
