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LogoutWordPress (WP) is a Content Management System (CMS) that allows users to publish content on the web and manage it through an easy-to-use interface. WP’s intuitive interface enables all kinds of users to design their websites without any prior experience. Many people use WP because it is free, open-source software that no one owns outright, so anyone can access its code and modify it for their purposes. There are thousands of plugins available in the official WP plugin repository, some free, others cost money or have a subscription fee. There are also hundreds of free and paid themes that change the look and feel of the site and thousands more available elsewhere on the Internet.
WordPress is written in PHP and has the following features:
Easy to use Content Management System, which means that users can easily edit their website using a WYSIWYG interface. There are no HTML or programming skills required to manage content on WP sites. You can have as many blogs hosted by one installation of WordPress as you like, each with its author name and password. There are various options for privacy for each blog – most blogs have publicly available comments, but private blogs are also an option. WP is extremely flexible in what it can do and how it looks - from beautiful full-width images to a minimal text-only page if required, the choice is yours. The WP community has created thousands of different designs for users to download and use - many are free, some cost money, or they have a subscription fee. Moving from one WordPress site to another does not require any special skills – it’s just like moving your email address from Gmail to Yahoo Mail.
WordPress is available in over 70 languages.
WP can be installed within minutes on any server running Apache (the most popular web server software) and MySQL (a database management system). WP is easily updated with automatic updates, which are downloaded directly through the admin interface. Its language packs mean that website content is available in dozens of different languages without uploading separate versions of pages for each language, making it easy to translate sites into multiple languages. It has thousands of plugins already coded by hundreds of developers who have made their work available to everyone for free.
WordPress is bug-free (more or less), and its code is freely available, so anyone can look at how it works and improve upon it. The community that uses WordPress has access to thousands of themes (both free and paid), plugins, widgets, etc., which they may modify or use as they wish to make their bespoke software.
WordPress prides itself on being secure – thanks to constant updates from the developers who work behind the scenes patching any loopholes found by users (or ‘hackers’), as well as monitoring threat levels daily.
WordPress’s open-source nature means that hackers cannot put malicious code directly into an official release of WP without it being noticed at an early stage and patched.
WordPress is free – no monthly fees to the developers, no new version every year which costs money, nothing like that. WordPress is a community of people who have created an easy-to-use software program for everyone to use for free so any sites you create using it are yours to do with as you please. It has built-in stats and blog tracking (both free and paid), which can be used to see how many visitors their site gets, what countries they’re from, how long they spend looking at pages on your site etc.
Every website is easily searchable by Google’s spidering bots, thanks to WP’s permalink feature. This means that when someone posts content to your blog, they can choose to have it found by search engines using a URL that looks like this: http://verybigdomainname.com/?p=12345. Every post on your blog has its unique permanent URL, which means bloggers do not need to worry about their content being lost under hundreds of other posts on the same page or overwritten when new content is added in a different order.
WordPress’s permalinks structure can easily be changed from the default, which will look like this: http://verybigdomainname.com/some-post-another-post/?p=12345 something more catchy and memorable. Custom permalink structures are also possible so users can set up pages with a base domain name such as http://verybigdomainname.com/index.php?p=12345 if they want, which would be more search engine friendly for blogs that have a very large number of posts and pages.
WordPress sites are easily manageable thanks to an admin panel - the Dashboard. The WP dashboard gives users access to all their different options in one place: changing themes, installing plugins, seeing stats, blogging, checking links, etc. All of this can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet as you only need the username and password WordPress provides when logging on, creating it very easy to move your site around as and where you please (if permission is granted) with no fuss or hassle.
WordPress has already been used by over 70 million people worldwide and can create anything from personal blogs and photo galleries to professional websites for small businesses.
Matt Mullenweg developed WordPress to create his website from 2003 to 2004, before becoming so popular that other developers wanted their piece of the cake. It’s been described as “the blogging engine that powers millions of websites around the globe,” and its flexibility means it is no surprise that it has become this widespread in such a short period. WordPress is well known for its simplicity, ease of use, reliability, and strength as an open-source project which gives users complete control over what they do with their site when they create it. WordPress is like Lego - you only need the bits you want and can easily take them out again if you don’t need them - the power is in your hands.
WordPress is also incredibly responsive – it can be viewed on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, meaning that people who use WP to develop their site or blog do not have to worry about making sure all their content looks good on multiple devices.
Themes make each WordPress installation unique - there are thousands of free themes available that one can use to change the look and feel of their site instantly. This is a great way to make your blog have its own unique identity and stand out from all the crowd. Many sites use premium themes that have been hand-made by professionals (like us!) you can pay for, so if you want your site to be even better than it already is, we recommend investing in some quality design work!
WordPress also has an extensive support network built around it consisting of people who enjoy using it as much as they like helping other users get started with WP. There are loads of WordPress forums where people ask questions about how to solve problems they may encounter along the way when setting up and looking after their WP blogs. We spend a lot of time updating our premium themes and plugins (we add new features all the time!) so that you can use them without bugs or problems, and there are always friendly people on hand to help with any issues you might have.
WordPress is Open Source - which means it’s free! You can download WordPress straight from the official website for no cost, but we also recommend upgrading as its updates are frequent and provide users with more options for using their site.
WordPress comes in two versions: WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org. The first version uses your domain name but doesn’t give you complete control over your blog/site because it is hosted on someone else’s private servers – we don’t recommend this for professional use. The second option allows you to upload your site onto servers you own or rent and gives you complete control over how content looks and what plugins are used on your online presence!
Setting up a blog with WordPress takes less than 5 minutes as it is so easy to install. Simply head along to the official website, download the software onto your computer, then upload it onto the web server of your choice – type in a username, password and away you go! There is also the option to sign up for hosting (there are lots of different companies, but only some allow WP sites) which costs around £10-15/month if you want something simple that does not require much effort on your part.
Several different sites can be used as the basis for your blog/site, such as Blogger and Tumblr. Still, if you want a professional business presence with full functionality, we recommend using WordPress. It is infinitely extendible and will give you everything you need to develop a great-looking site that keeps your customers entertained. If you’re thinking about setting up an online shop, WP would be a great choice because it can easily integrate with e-commerce plugins for payment gateways such as PayPal, WorldPay, or your own website’s shopping cart system. If you ever wanted to use someone else’s platform for hosting (for example, Squarespace), then at least having WP installed means that any content put onto your site can easily be transferred into another system if your provider goes bust!
If you have any questions about WordPress, then we’d love to hear from you at our website - the best place for people starting up new sites or looking after existing ones. Please feel free to read some of our other guides, which will help you start creating a blog/website using WordPress, and don’t forget that we do offer support if you ever run into problems along the way. Thanks for reading this article, and good luck setting up your site