WordPress is website publishing software. In technical jargon you may here it described as content management system or CMS. When WordPress was first introduced to the world, it was was primarly a blog publishing app. Now since blog have lost a lot of their popularity in the era of social media, WordPress is transitioning to become a more general purpose website builder.
There many many software services that do the same thing as WordPress and some that do it much better. So what makes WordPress special?
As an open-source software, WordPress is free to use. Yes, there is absolutely zero cost to get the WordPress software. However, you do still have to pay a web hosting company for server space and a domain registrar for a custom domain.
WordPress also has a huge community of developers that create new enhancements for the core software. These ready-made softwar extentions, or plugins, are very convenient for website developers. This vast library of plugins also saves clients and website owners lots of time and resources.
Since WordPress is open source, you own your content. Even if you stop paying for web hosting service, you can still set up a WordPress server and your own computer, migrate your website to it, and continue to make edits. With proprietary software companies, once you stop paying for service, you also lose the ability to export and change your content.
So now you know that WordPress is a website publishing software that makes it easy to create content and publish it on the internet. You also learned that WordPress is well known for collections of feature extentions called plugins that make it easy to customize a website with a wide variety of features.
For further study, you can check out these resources:
- WordPress Codex
In depth documentation of the WordPress software. - Learn WordPress
A directory of courses and resources for WordPress newbies. - Theme ShaperThemeShaper
The official blog of the WordPress theme team. - WordPress GitHub
One of the main public repositories for WordPress and related software. - WordPress Core Team
The official blog of the WordPress development team. - WP Tavern
Regular news articles on important events affecting WordPress software.
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