What is WordPress?

Technically speaking, wordpress is a free Content Management System (CMS). It is a system that helps you create, edit and publish content on the web. The content can be text, images, videos, forms or anything else.

If you’ve freaked out with this definition of WordPress – don’t worry. Even I did!!! You can consider wordpress as a tool used to make websites and blogs. That’s what most people understand wordpress as.

It’s a simple yet complex tool used to manage almost any kind of website. It has got easy-to-use interface to create, edit and publish your content. It’s just a Microsoft Word like application with click-and-use intuitive interface.

WordPress started as a tool to make blogging websites but today with the kind of development (still ongoing) it has undergone you can create almost any kind of website. You can see the wordpress showcase here.

Who uses WordPress?

WordPress is for anyone who wants to make an online presence. May you want a website for blogging, selling products, business, portfolio or anything else – wordpress is right for you. Today there are over 73 million website made on wordpress. Also top 60% of top 1 million websites are made on wordpress platform. The numbers should suggest you how popular and widely the platform is used. You can see more wordpress stats here.

WordPress Showcase

Why Use WordPress?

• Its Free: It is open source and completely free to use. You have access to all its code and if you have coding knowledge you may tweak few bits of code to customize it to suit your needs.
• Easy To Use: As I have previously mentioned it has a intuitive and easy-to-use interface. It is almost as easy to use as Microsoft Word or any other similar software.
• Flexible: As it a open source it is highly flexible. There is a very active community of wordpress who develop plugins that adds extra functionality to your website. Like there are apps for mobile, there are plugins for wordpress. There are both paid and free plugins available. You may browse wordpress plugins here.

WordPress Plugins on the website

• Constantly Updated: WordPress and plugins developers are very actively developing stuffs to meet the current days needs. Almost every year there is a new version of WordPress available with latest being WordPress 3.8.
• No Coding Knowledge required: To design a wordpress website you need no knowledge of HTML, PHP or anything else. Although having coding knowledge is a advantage.

Difference between WordPress Website and Other Website?

The major difference between the wordpress website and the other website is the ease of use and the flexibility. Most of the non-wordpress websites are made either by writing HTML codes or using Website Builder tools. Writing HTML codes is a donkey work. That doesn’t make sense these days. Website Builder is quicker and easy but has very less flexibility compared to WordPress tools. Website builder provides easy drag and drop feature to make your website. But designing options available are quite limited compared to wordpress.

In WordPress you have a backend and the frontend panel. Frontend panel is your actual website where people view the content. Backend is where you have all the setting options. You just select from variety of options to design your website. You write your content in a MS Word like visual editor and choose where to place it on your website. The system itself places the content where you asked it to. You just click around the backend panel and get your website ready.

WordPress 3.8 Backend Panel

What you need to get started?

To get started you only need a Domain name and Web Hosting account. That’s it. Also if you do not have a domain name and webhosting you can still start learning and designing wordpress by installing it on your computer. But it doesn’t get installed directly like other software. There are few other software you need and a few steps to be followed.

Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

WordPress.com is a service that hosts wordpress blogs. It’s free service to start with. You get a domain as www.yourwebsite.wordpress.com. It also has paid version with extra features like you can have your own domain, remove ads, etc. But there are lots of limitations in the free as well as paid version. You have limited theme options. You cannot add any plugins or themes which is the biggest drawback. Without plugins and good theme your site cannot look great and have good user interface.

WordPress.org is a community of people working on open source, trying to develop and expand WordPress application. This application is available free and needs to be hosted on your own servers. Once you install this open source on your server you have all the freedom to customize your website. You can upload any theme, add any plugins and customize your website any way you want. This is the biggest drawback on the hosted version of WordPress.com.

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