Best Hosting and over 60 million other websites run on WordPress, and statistics say that more than a third of the entire Internet runs on WordPress. In this lesson, we will explain to you in detail what WordPress is, its features, history, types of WordPress sites, what WordPress plugins are and their importance. We will also show you how to create a WordPress site, the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and more.
Mostly, you hear about WordPress a lot, but you may not know much about it.. But you are not the only one, many people have no idea what WordPress is? What is the reason for its great popularity and what exactly distinguishes WordPress from its competitors?
WordPress is a software or tool used to easily create and manage website content.
Using WordPress to create a website or blog is the simplest, most popular and easiest way among website owners these days. More than 37% of all websites on the Internet are powered by WordPress.
Despite its great power and many features, WordPress is a free and open source content management system. WordPress is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database, and both are free and open source as well.
WordPress is considered by many experts to be the easiest and most powerful website content management system (CMS) available today.
Is what they say true or just a claim?
Let’s debunk this claim and learn more about what WordPress is, its features and history…
Lesson sections
- WordPress History
- WordPress is not just for blogging
- Types of WordPress Sites
- WordPress Features
- WordPress Plugins
- Create a WordPress site
- WordPress Login
- Difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
- Frequently Asked Questions
WordPress History
WordPress began life in 2003 when Mike Little and Matt Mullen formed a little-known blogging tool known as B2/cafelog, which was intended to become a blogging platform with distinct and different capabilities, built on the original B2 code base.
But with more powerful features and more development, WordPress was created, which was the first blogging tool, and then very quickly became a comprehensive content management system (CMS) capable of handling a variety of websites.
According to WordPress web or content management system usage statistics, which indicate that WordPress powers more than 60 million websites, or 36% of all websites on the Internet and more than 60% of all known websites and content management systems, because it is free and easy to use, it has been widely adopted.
WordPress is a great platform for a wide variety of websites, from blogging to e-commerce to business sites, portfolios, and major press and media sites. It is a versatile content management system, designed to be easy to use and flexible, and is a great solution for both large and small websites alike.
Anyone can use or modify WordPress for free, as the content management system comes in the form of a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website such as content without having to know anything about programming.
Anyone can also build a website, even non-developers, or those with only a little experience with computers.
If your company uses WordPress for web publishing, rest assured that WordPress is used by many blogs, news outlets, music sites, companies, media organizations, celebrities, and many popular newspaper sites and channels.
WordPress is not just for blogging
For many years WordPress was primarily a tool for creating blogs, but nowadays, thanks to changes to the core code, as well as the ecosystem, and the addition of many plugins and themes in WordPress, you can create any type of website using WordPress.
For example, WordPress powers a large number of business websites and blogs, and it’s also become the most popular way to create online stores.
Examples of sites that WordPress can create include:
- Personal Sites
- Online stores
- Blogs
- Portfolio
- Forums
- social media sites
- Paid Membership Sites
Websites that can be created using WordPress
Blogs
A blog is a special type of website dedicated to sharing ideas, photos, comments, tutorials, recipes, literary activity, and more.
E-commerce sites
WordPress allows you to create an online store to sell goods and services online and get paid through multiple online payment methods or cash on delivery.
Recently, with the spread of e-commerce, many commercial entities have moved to expand their business activities to include online sales or even transfer their activities to the entire network.
WordPress allows you to create an online store easily and for free using free plugins such as WooCommerce . Therefore, you will only need to pay for website hosting and domain registration and renewal fees.
Gallery
Most clients like to see your work before they buy your services. With WordPress, you can easily showcase your artwork and skills by creating a portfolio website.
Online forums
Forums are a place for discussion and exchange of ideas and knowledge between users of the Internet. With WordPress, you can create an online forum to allow members to ask questions or share advice. There are many forum sites that work with WordPress.
E-learning sites
Going to school or training centers is no longer a requirement to learn a certain skill.
With e-learning sites, students can enroll in online courses, track their progress, and download study materials. Using WordPress and a special type of plugin called a Learning Management System (LMS), you can easily deliver online courses to students.
WordPress Features
No matter what type of website you want to create, there are many reasons and advantages to using WordPress over others.
WordPress is free and open source.
One of the biggest advantages of WordPress is that it is free and open source software, although you will need to pay a little for hosting, a domain, themes, and paid plugins if you want to use them.
WordPress itself is free and you will never have to pay to use it as it is not owned by any single company or entity. Hundreds of developers and users collaborate and contribute to developing and improving the software.
Tens of thousands of WordPress plugins
You can also find many free, open source or paid WordPress plugins to improve your site’s performance and add additional functionality to it.
WordPress is scalable
Even if you’re not a developer, you can easily customize your website thanks to WordPress’s huge ecosystem of themes and plugins.
Lots of templates
There are currently over 5,000 free WordPress themes, plus many paid ones. Using them, you can change the look and design of your site with ease and customize the design to match your brand or identity.
WordPress is easy to install.
You don’t need to be a technical genius to create your own website, as you can install WordPress and start building your site with a few simple steps.
WordPress is very flexible.
WordPress gives you a lot of flexibility in creating almost any type of website, and it enables you to easily and flexibly develop your site as you want.
Add forums and social networks
You can easily add a forum to your WordPress site without any hassle, just use a WordPress plugin like bbPress. You can also turn your site into a social network by using the BuddyPress plugin.
It is used by many popular sites.
There are some prominent brands using WordPress along with many well-known and popular websites that run on WordPress.
Examples include CNN blogs, Reuters news agency, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Mashable, The Next Web, and The New Yorker, all of which are built on WordPress as well.
If WordPress is powerful enough for these sites, it is certainly powerful enough for any site you want to create.
You can find help easily.
Because WordPress is so popular and used by so many people, it’s easy to find help if you run into any problems.
There is a huge amount of help to solve WordPress problems that you may encounter. You will find it on blogs, YouTube, forums, Facebook groups, and there are also developers that you can turn to for free or paid help if needed.
Simplicity
WordPress allows you to quickly publish and create website content, even as a beginner, you can easily use WordPress.
A thriving community of users and developers.
When you own and build a WordPress website, you can also get involved in the larger WordPress community through local WordPress gatherings and WordCamps.
Attractive appearance
With just a click of a button, you can completely change the look of your website by applying a new WordPress theme. There are also advanced WordPress plugins that allow you to easily build your website pages by dragging and dropping, giving you more control over the look of your website pages.
Safe system
Although no system is 100% secure, WordPress security continues to improve with a vigilant security team of developers who resolve and fix security issues and vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered.
The vast majority of WordPress hacks are the result of human error by the site owner or a vulnerable plugin or theme, not WordPress itself.
SEO Friendly
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) starts at the software (script) level used to create the website. WordPress is one of the most search engine friendly content management systems (SMS) out there.
WordPress is mobile friendly
Most WordPress themes are now mobile-friendly or responsive for ease of use and access by users from different devices.
Media Library
WordPress includes a built-in media library where you can upload media files and embed them in posts and pages. You can even make some edits to your images within WordPress.
User friendly interface
The WordPress user interface is very easy to use with no complicated settings and a huge amount of tutorials on how to use it are available online.
Custom Lists
WordPress makes it easy to create navigation menus that contain links to your pages or custom links.
WordPress can be used to create membership sites.
It’s easy to set up a members-only site using WordPress plugins. There are dozens of members-only plugins available, some free and some paid.
You can also use these plugins to create a paid content site and online forums, in addition to using them to create paid or free membership sites.
WordPress Plugins
A WordPress plugin is a package of additional code that you can upload to your website to add additional features or functionality to WordPress.
You can install WordPress plugins manually by uploading them to your site’s hosting via a file manager or FTP program. You can also install thousands of free plugins from the WordPress.org plugin repository from within your dashboard using WordPress’ built-in search function.
You can also install plugins from within the control panel without having to manually upload them to the hosting. This is if the plugin files are compressed in ZIP format and once uploaded, WordPress will decompress and install the plugin automatically.
Top WordPress Plugins
Although WordPress comes with a large number of features, it lacks some functions and features that you can get by installing one or more plugins.
One of the most prominent examples of this is the backup feature for your site, as WordPress does not come with a backup feature despite its importance. There are several good WordPress backup plugins that you can use to keep backup copies of your site, which will be your refuge if you lose any data related to your site or if it is hacked.
It is also important to use security plugins on your site that help fix common security vulnerabilities and secure your site against attacks. There are many plugins for all uses and needs such as SEO plugins, site acceleration plugins and many more.
WordPress eCommerce plugins also help you if you want to sell goods or services on your website by creating an online store using WordPress.
Create a WordPress site
Are you asking yourself now, “ How do I start using WordPress? ”?
As we mentioned earlier, WordPress itself is 100% free and you can easily create a WordPress website in just a few steps:
Buy hosting for the website
For WordPress to work, it needs good web hosting on which to build the site. Hosting is a web server or part of it, and there are more than one hosting service that you can learn about in the lesson on comparing types of paid hosting on our website.
There are many WordPress hosting companies that you can purchase one of their services for your new website, such as Bluehost, which is considered the most prominent WordPress hosting company. However, this does not prevent the existence of other high-quality hosting providers such as HostGator and A2 Hosting .
Domain registration
A domain name is the address of your website on the Internet that visitors use to visit your website. The closest example of this is Google’s domain, google.comBest Hosting’s domain is, myhost.host and Twitter’s domain is twitter.com.
Your site needs to register a domain and link it to hosting correctly so that the site appears to everyone who visits your site link. There are many domain registration companies such as GoDaddy and its rising competitor Namecheap that enable you to reserve a domain for your site for a full year for about $10.
Install WordPress on hosting
In order for WordPress to work, it must be installed on the hosting you purchased for your site, and WordPress comes with a built-in tool to easily install it manually.
Many hosting companies also provide a tool to easily install WordPress from within the hosting control panel. Some web hosts, such as Bluehost and the American hosting company DreamHost, even install WordPress automatically on some new accounts.
By following the previous steps, you will have a complete website that works using WordPress without needing someone to create it for you.
If you prefer not to bother yourself with buying hosting or a domain and paying for their renewal, you can create a hosted WordPress blog. This is done by creating a free account on WordPress.com , but it is closer to Blogger blogs and has limited features compared to self-hosted WordPress.
How to Login to WordPress
WordPress can be downloaded from WordPress.org , which provides all the information and educational explanations that help you join the WordPress user community and learn about all its features and the opinions of visitors and users.
Once you have WordPress installed on your web server, you can access your WordPress login page through two different URLs.
Once you find your way to the control panel, you will realize that it is easy to use without the need for a teacher or technical skill.
When you explore the WordPress dashboard, you will notice that it allows you to control all the details of your site by clicking a few buttons.
There is also the WordPress admin bar or toolbar which is a shortcut area that allows you to access controls when you are on the front end of your WordPress blog or website.
Difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
WordPress.org (self-hosted WordPress) is often confused with WordPress.com, which is a blog hosting service.
WordPress.org
Self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.org, commonly referred to as just “WordPress,” is a blogging tool and content management system.
It is completely free, open source and not affiliated with any company or profit organization. In order to use it, you need to buy web hosting , rent a web server or use a local server to install WordPress on.
WordPress.org supports the use of external WordPress plugins and themes and gives you advanced permissions to modify everything related to the site and access its files.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a blog hosting service similar to Google’s Blogger and is considered its main competitor.
WordPress.com is owned by Automattic , a web development company founded in 2005 by Matt Mullen, the founder of WordPress. It owns several WordPress-related services, the most famous of which is Jetpack.com , and has acquired the publishing platform Tumblr.
WordPress.com allows users to create and run a website or blog for free on a subdomain of wordpress.com. The best part about the service is that it is free hosting that saves you the hassle of buying hosting and a domain for your site. There are also paid packages for those looking for additional features such as using a paid domain or using better templates.
The drawback of WordPress.com sites is that they only allow you to choose your site’s template and you can only customize it to a certain extent and you cannot use external templates.
Users also cannot access the site’s code or use external WordPress plugins or themes except in the more expensive packages, which is available with WordPress.org for free.
WordPress FAQ
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a blogging and website creation tool and content management system for websites.
How much does it cost to use WordPress?
WordPress is completely free.
You will only need to pay the web hosting provider for hosting to install WordPress on and the domain registration fees .
What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
WordPress.org, commonly referred to as “WordPress,” is a free website building and blogging tool.
WordPress.com is a blog hosting service similar to Blogger that has a free plan and other paid plans.
What is the best WordPress hosting?
There are many good WordPress hosting companies in the market and one of the best WordPress hosting providers is the well-known hosting company Bluehost .
Do you now know what WordPress is?
If you have a question or inquiry, send it to us in one of the comments below and we will answer it
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