What is WordPress?
If you’ve ever wondered what is WordPress and why it’s trusted by millions of users and businesses, this guide explains everything you need to know.
At its core, WordPress is a popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 43.6% of all websites on the internet — that’s nearly half the web!
On a more technical level, WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) licensed under GPLv2. This means anyone can use or modify WordPress software for free.
A content management system is basically a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website – like content – without needing to know anything about programming.
The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone.
What kind of websites can WordPress make?
Many years ago, WordPress was primarily a tool to create a blog, rather than more traditional websites. That hasn’t been true for a long time, though.
For example, not only does WordPress power a huge number of business sites and blogs, it’s also popular for creating an eCommerce store as well!
- Business websites
- eCommerce stores
- Blogs
- Portfolios
- Resumes
- Forums
- Social networks
- Membership sites
- …pretty much anything else you can dream up.
Who made WordPress and how long has it been around?
WordPress was created as a standalone project all the way back in 2003, originating as an offshoot of a previous project called b2/cafelog.
WordPress is open-source software, so nowadays it’s made by a huge community of contributors.
Since then, Matt Mullenweg has largely become the face of WordPress. And he’s also the founder of Automattic, which is the company behind the for-profit WordPress.com service.
The history of WordPress between its founding as a blog platform back in 2003 and today is a long one…
But suffice it to say, WordPress has pushed forward and, thanks to its contributors and huge community, developed into the most popular solution to create any type of website.
Why should you use WordPress?
Ok, so over 43.6% of all the websites on the Internet are using WordPress, including well-known entities.
But what about you? Why should you use WordPress?
Well, no matter what type of website you want to create, there are plenty of reasons to use WordPress. Here are some of the biggest:
1. WordPress is free and open source
One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is that it’s free, open-source software. While you will need to pay a little bit for hosting, you will never have to pay just to use the WordPress software, which isn’t the case with alternatives like Squarespace.
Beyond that, you can also find lots of open-source plugins and themes to change how your website looks and functions. Speaking of….
2. WordPress is extensible
Even if you aren’t a developer, you can easily modify your website thanks to WordPress’ huge ecosystem of themes and plugins:
- Themes – these primarily change how your website looks.
- Plugins – these primarily change how your website functions. Plugins can be something small, like a contact form, or huge, like creating an eCommerce store.
Currently, there are over 50,000 free WordPress plugins and 5,000 free WordPress themes, as well as tons of premium options. That to say – you have plenty of choices!
3. WordPress is easy to install
Think you need to be a tech genius to create your own website? Think again! If you can click a few buttons, you can install WordPress on your site.
Nowadays, most web hosts either:
- Offer to preinstall WordPress for you so that your site is ready to go right away.
- Give you dedicated tools that make the install process very beginner-friendly.
4. WordPress is flexible
We’ve touched on this already, but WordPress is great because it lets you create pretty much any type of website. Better yet, your website can also evolve with you.
Want to add a forum to your existing WordPress site? No problem – just install the bbPress plugin! Want to add a social network? No worries! Just use the BuddyPress plugin.
You’re never locked into a specific set of functions – you can always adapt and evolve.
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5. It’s easy to find help
Because WordPress is so popular, it’s easy to find help if you ever run into any issues. There are heaps of…
- Blogs
- Tutorials
- Forums
- Facebook Groups
- Developers
…that you can turn to for free and paid help if needed.
