What is WordPress?

WordPress is an online software that enables you to manage your website. It is the world’s most popular and free blogging platform and content management system or CMS for short, helping you create and manage your entire website. You can download it here.

WordPress is built using PHP and JavaScript, and MySQL for the database. But fear not. When you use WordPress, you do not need to touch any code if you are administering your website. It is all managed through a graphical interface that makes it easy for anyone to use.

WORDPRESS – “Create a link through which you can market your dream products. Create a blog or a website of your own depending on what you want to be recognized for. Share your experiences through these media.”

— Wellington Duarte – SJS Web Design (@sjswebdesignuk) November 24, 2020

The great thing about why WordPress has grown so popular over the years is that it is a hundred percent free and open source.

This means that anyone can tweak or build upon the code, and your contribution can be used to make it better for everyone. Whether that be contributing to the core framework or contributing in other ways, the WordPress community is what makes it so strong.

WordPress community

There are hundreds of people worldwide working on WordPress, and because it’s free, means you are free to use it without paying anyone a license fee.

Who uses WordPress?

What started as a small project to enhance everyday writing typography has turned into the vast community that it is today. Over the years, it has steadily grown to be used by millions of sites across the world used, approximately 30% of every website online.

There are tens of millions of WordPress websites in existence today. Thousands of famous blogs, news outlets, music artists, Fortune 500 companies, and celebrities all use WordPress.

So, is WordPress right for you?

There are so many reasons why you should use WordPress. WordPress is completely customizable and has so many different uses for it. If you are trying to push the boundaries of what you can do in WordPress, you can browse tens of thousands of free plugins.

This makes customizing WordPress to your needs a limitation only by your imagination and technical ability.

WordPress is free

You don’t need to pay any money to download and use WordPress. It is only a web application that you download and put onto your website hosting to run.

Once you have your website hosting setup, then you’re free to use it.

WordPress is search engine friendly

It is built to deliver your content optimized for search engines. This is critical to your site’s visibility and online success. WordPress can be extended with plugins to deliver even more SEO performance, but your search visibility is in good hands, even without additional plugins.

Great for SEO

Even Google said that WordPress is made to do SEO well.

WordPress automatically takes care of many SEO tasks, and 80 to 90% of the mechanical side of SEO is done for you. That is, WordPress is very crawlable and user-friendly, making it great for SEO.

WordPress is easy

A new release of WordPress comes out on average every four months. From the initial scoping meeting to the launch of the version. With each release comes better usability, faster ways to edit your site, and overall better ease of use.

You can do an online WordPress and SEO course in Manchester to learn more about the tool.

Because WordPress is contributed to by hundreds of people around the world, each person has their input for the better to make sure it is the best content management system around.

The fact that you do not need to touch any code makes it a huge selling point for people of limited programming abilities.

They have also done an excellent job, of ensuring you do not need to touch any themes or plugins to publish content on your website.

All the visual aspects of your website are handled by your WordPress theme.

WordPress themes and how they work

Themes are interchangeable and allow you to quickly set a different layout by changing either the theme options or the theme altogether.

WordPress comes with a couple of default themes that are an excellent place to start. If you want to venture further than what is set for you, you can choose a WordPress theme from the theme directory.

All the themes in this directory have been audited by the WordPress quality team to ensure there are no errors and are built to strict standards.

WordPress is not the only place you can go to get good themes though you have to be careful that you do not choose a theme that tries to do too much as it can slow your site down.

Whichever way you choose your theme, there are plenty of options to choose from, and what you can’t achieve from your theme can be achieved by installing a WordPress plugin, then extending your WordPress with plugins.

WordPress’ plugins

WordPress’ plugins are used to extend your WordPress website and are easily installed in WordPress. They provide functionality that your theme does not or should not provide.

These features that can be added to your site, could include:

• contact forms;
• sliders;
• search optimization tools, and
• e-commerce shopping carts, to name a few.

There are tens of thousands of WordPress plugins available for free on the WordPress directory and many other places.

The best WordPress plugins have millions of installs and are regularly updated to provide security fixes and new features.

How do you get started using WordPress?

WordPress can be downloaded for free for self-hosted installations from wordpress.org. When you register your WordPress hosting, you will install WordPress through the management system of your hosting server.

What to do next? WordPress is growing into a powerful content management system used and loved by millions of people worldwide. There is no better time to begin setting up your WordPress website online.

If you have trouble installing WordPress, try to contact me to be your Freelance WordPress Developer in Manchester.