What is WordPress?

What is WordPress? WordPress is open source software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. It just may be the easiest and most flexible blogging and website content management system (CMS) for beginners.

This 5-minute video provides a quick introduction to WordPress and demonstrates why it is the most popular web publishing platform today.

Covered in this video:

• What is WordPress?
• Brief history of WordPress.
• Why it’s much more than a blogging tool.
• The power of “Open Source.”
• How WordPress works.
• Six reasons to choose WordPress.

What is WordPress?

In non-geek speak, WordPress is web publishing software you can use to create your own website or blog. Since it was released in 2003, WordPress has become one of the most popular web publishing platforms. Today it powers more than 70 million websites!

But many people don’t realize that WordPress is much more just a blogging tool. It’s also a highly flexible content management system (CMS) that enables you to build and manage your own full-featured website using just your web browser. Best of all, it’s completely FREE.

That’s because WordPress is an ‘Open Source’ project. That means that hundreds of volunteers from all around the world are constantly creating and improving the code for the WordPress software. And, there are thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes that enable you to build just about any type of website you can imagine.

So, how does WordPress work?

Since the earliest days of the Internet, websites have been created in HTML — a programming language that utilizes instructions called ‘tags’ to format text, page layouts, images, and so on.

Your web browser then reads this HTML code, interpreting those tags to render and display the content of a particular page.

Today, you can install the WordPress software script on your own web server in about 5 minutes. Once installed, you’ll use a simple, web-based editor to create web pages — without having to learn HTML. There is even a hosted version at WordPress.com that allows you to create a new WordPress-powered website in just a few seconds.

And, because it’s built on industry-standard PHP and MySQL, WordPress can run on just about any modern web server.

There are several reasons WordPress is a great choice for building your blog or business website.

1. First of all, WordPress is Open Source. That means that there are hundreds of people all around the world working on improving WordPress. And because WordPress is an open source project it’s also completely FREE.
2. Second, it’s user-friendly. Rather than having to hire a web designer or contact a “webmaster” every time you want to make a small change to your website, you can easily manage and update your own content — without having to learn HTML. In fact, if you know how to use the basic formatting tools in a program like Microsoft Word, you can edit your site.

3. Third, it’s flexible and extensible. There are thousands of plugins and themes that enable you to easily change the entire look of your website, or even add new features like polls or contact forms, with just a few clicks.

4. Next, if you run into problems, or you want to add custom features, it’s easy to find support or hire someone to help you. In addition to the WordPress tutorials on this site, there are also thousands of WordPress developers and designers who can help you. The official WordPress Forum is a great place to get answers to your questions.

5. WordPress is SEO-friendly. Right out of the box, WordPress includes everything you need to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines. This is critical to your site’s visibility and online success. Matt Cutts of Google says, “WordPress is made to do SEO well.”

6. Last, you’re in control of your own content. Other publishing platforms limit what you can and can’t do on your own website. And, you’re locked in to that service. If it should ever shut down, your content could simply disappear. With WordPress, you can import your data from other systems like Blogger or Tumblr. And you can also easily export your data to move away from WordPress, should you choose. You’re in control of your site… and your content  

 

Is WordPress right for you?

If you’re looking for an easy tool that will help you to build your own blog or website without learning complicated HTML, WordPress is right for you. And, you’ll find that WordPress is incredibly flexible, with thousands of themes, plugins, and support options to ensure that your site will continue to grow with you in the future.

We hope this has been helpful, and we look forward to seeing what you’re able to build with WordPress!