What is WordPress? Simply explained for beginners.

Word­Press is a web appli­ca­ti­on that allows you to crea­te your web­site, blog or even online store.

Gene­ra­li­zed, Word­Press is the easie­st and most popu­lar con­tent manage­ment sys­tem to crea­te your own web­site or blog.

Sin­ce Word­Press is offe­red as open source soft­ware under the GPLv2 licen­se, the use is free of char­ge. Word­Press is based on PHP and MyS­QL and must the­r­e­fo­re be instal­led on a web ser­ver (Apa­che, Nginx).

With the help of Word­Press, now even tho­se who are not deve­lo­pers can crea­te web­sites.

What is a content management system? #

A con­tent manage­ment sys­tem, CMS for short, does exact­ly what the name impli­es, it helps you mana­ge your con­tent.

The sys­tem offers you an inter­face that you can open via your brow­ser. The­re you will find the opti­ons for mana­ging your con­tent. Let’s take a look at how to crea­te con­tent for a page on Word­Press.

You can find simi­lar input opti­ons in other con­tent manage­ment sys­tems.

Bes­i­des Word­Press, the­re are other con­tent manage­ment sys­tems such as TYPO3, Drup­al, Joom­la and, for some time now, modu­lar sys­tems such as WIX.

Here you can find an artic­le that deals with the topic — What is a con­tent manage­ment sys­tem? — deals with.

What types of websites can I create with WordPress? #

Ori­gi­nal­ly, Word­Press was meant as a blog sys­tem, but over the years it has grown into a real con­tent manage­ment sys­tem. By now, you can crea­te any kind of web­site with Word­Press.

Many cor­po­ra­te web­sites and blogs have alre­a­dy been imple­men­ted with Word­Press. In addi­ti­on, more and more online stores are swit­ching to Word­Press and Woo­Com­mer­ce.

With Word­Press, you can pro­du­ce for exam­p­le the fol­lo­wing pro­jects:

• Web­sites
• Online stores
• Blogs
• Port­fo­li­os
• Bio­gra­phies
• Forums
• Social net­works
• Auc­tion sites
• Clas­si­fieds

To list just a few of the pos­si­bi­li­ties.

In addi­ti­on, the modu­lar struc­tu­re of Word­Press allows you to extend your web­site with num­e­rous free and paid plug­ins.

The same appli­es to the design of your web­site. In addi­ti­on to free the­mes offe­red by Word­Press, you can also use pre­mi­um the­mes, for which you have to pay. Theme­Fo­rest, MOJO Mar­ket­place and Tem­pla­te­Mons­ter offer you a good sel­ec­tion of the­mes to choo­se from.

Why should you use WordPress? #

With a mar­ket share of over 42% (source: w3techs), Word­Press is the lea­ding con­tent manage­ment sys­tem world­wi­de. Many well-known orga­niza­ti­ons, such as Micro­soft, alre­a­dy use Word­Press.

WordPress is free and open source. #

The most important argu­ment is cle­ar­ly that Word­Press is a free, open source soft­ware that has a huge com­mu­ni­ty behind it. You can use it as often as you like, and if you have any pro­blems you can always turn to the com­mu­ni­ty for help.

The lar­ge sel­ec­tion of free plug­ins and the­mes also allows you to cus­to­mi­ze your web­site to your liking.

WordPress is modular, extensible! #

You can eit­her extend Word­Press yours­elf with free and paid plug­ins, or use pro­fes­sio­nal web deve­lo­pers who crea­te cus­tom exten­si­ons and the­mes for you.

Curr­ent­ly, Word­Press has 57,824 plug­ins and 7,890 the­mes that you can access for free at any time through your admin panel.

WordPress is easy to install. #

Instal­ling Word­Press is so easy that many hos­ting pro­vi­ders alre­a­dy offer packa­ges with Word­Press pre-instal­led.

Alter­na­tively, Word­Press offers you a wizard that gui­des you step by step through the instal­la­ti­on.

Upload the data to your web ser­ver, call your domain and fol­low the instal­la­ti­on. It’s as simp­le as that.

WordPress is flexible to use. #

You can crea­te just about any­thing you need with Word­Press:

• Landing page to sup­port your mar­ke­ting cam­paigns
• Busi­ness card for your com­pa­ny
• Forums to com­mu­ni­ca­te with your com­mu­ni­ty
• Blog to crea­te a dia­ry
• Online store to sell your pro­ducts
• Intra­net to share files within the com­pa­ny

Your pos­si­bi­li­ties are almost unli­mi­t­ed. Social media can also be inte­gra­ted into your web­site at any time, so that visi­tors can share your con­tent with their fri­ends and acquain­tances.

Or sim­ply crea­te a mul­tich­an­nel online store and mar­ket your pro­ducts direct­ly on mul­ti­ple plat­forms thanks to the inte­gra­ti­on of Goog­le Shop­ping, Ebay and Co.

Help from the WordPress community at any time. #

As alre­a­dy men­tio­ned, Word­Press has a huge com­mu­ni­ty, so you can also find count­less tuto­ri­als, gui­des and help on the Inter­net.

But the com­mu­ni­ty is also a good place to go if you can’t find a sui­ta­ble solu­ti­on to your pro­blem.

Alter­na­tively, you can of cour­se call on us at any time.

Can I install WordPress on my computer? #

Yes! For deve­lo­p­ment and test­ing, you can also install Word­Press on your com­pu­ter.

Howe­ver, this requi­res some tech­ni­cal know-how. First, you need to emu­la­te a local ser­ver. You can do this, for exam­p­le, with the free appli­ca­ti­on XAMPP from Apachefriends.org.

After that, you need to install and set up Word­Press as usu­al.

Important: Once you have finis­hed crea­ting your web­site, you should install it on a web hos­ter. The local com­pu­ter is usual­ly not sui­ta­ble for publi­shing a web­site.

What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com? #

WordPress.org is the free, open source soft­ware that you can install on your own web host. With it you can crea­te a 100% cus­tom web­site.

WordPress.com is a paid ser­vice powered by WordPress.org soft­ware. So here, you get limi­t­ed access to a pre-instal­led Word­Press soft­ware.

When­ever we talk about Word­Press, we mean the open source soft­ware pro­vi­ded by WordPress.org. So if you want to have full access to all the func­tion­a­li­ties, you should install the soft­ware on your own web hos­ting.

Who made WordPress, and how long has it been around? #

Word­Press was brought to life as a stan­da­lo­ne pro­ject back in 2003. It is an off­shoot of an ear­lier pro­ject cal­led b2/cafelog.

Ori­gi­nal­ly, Word­Press was deve­lo­ped by Matt Mull­en­weg and Mike Litt­le. Mean­while, Word­Press is deve­lo­ped as open source soft­ware by a lar­ge com­mu­ni­ty con­sis­ting of many con­tri­bu­tors.

Matt Mull­en­weg is the face of Word­Press and also the foun­der of WordPress.com.

Ori­gi­nal­ly desi­gned as a blog, Word­Press has evol­ved over the years to beco­me the most fle­xi­ble and popu­lar con­tent manage­ment sys­tem in the world.

Who uses WordPress? #

Word­Press is used by retail­ers, busi­nesses, cor­po­ra­ti­ons as well as indi­vi­du­als. As a Word­Press agen­cy, we also use Word­Press for our web­site.

Here are a few examp­les that were imple­men­ted with Word­Press:

New York Times #

The web­site of the New York Times, was crea­ted with Word­Press.

Walt Disney #

Walt Disney’s web­site also reli­es on the popu­lar Word­Press con­tent manage­ment sys­tem.

Katy Perry Blog #

Katy Per­ry also reli­es on Word­Press for her offi­ci­al blog.

So — What is WordPress? WordPress is the best way to create your website, online store and blog. #

Word­Press is not wit­hout reason the most popu­lar and wide­ly used con­tent manage­ment sys­tem in the world. The num­bers send a clear signal here.

The fle­xi­ble usa­bi­li­ty, simp­le ope­ra­ti­on and modu­lar expan­da­bili­ty speak for them­sel­ves. In addi­ti­on, the­re is a lar­ge, hel­pful com­mu­ni­ty.

So if you are just start­ing to rea­li­ze your own pro­ject in the digi­tal age, you should defi­ni­te­ly take a look at Word­Press.

You still have ques­ti­ons? Then use our com­ment func­tion. We are also hap­py to recei­ve feed­back at any time.