This guide is designed to provide you with an overview of WordPress and how it all began. What was once a simple blogging platform turned into the world’s most popular continent management system (CMS) all in the space of 10 years.
The past few years have seen a rapid increase in the production of WordPress themes (templates), plugins and other services that help businesses manage their websites and help web designers create and expand websites to the client’s needs.
Facts
• WordPress is used by more than 18.9% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013.
• WordPress is the most popular blogging system in use on the web.
• Its founders; Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little first released WordPress on May 27, 2003.
• WordPress is a free, open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.
Key Features
WordPress is an open source CMS. Everyone has access to customize and develop core files in order to develop their websites. Themes and plugins are arguably the two most influential features that have made WordPress the CMS it is today. WordPress was one of the first platforms that made it possible to install a new website design with the help of themes straight through the CMS. Likewise with plugins, developing the functionality and usability of your website has never been easier.
Themes
As we pointed out above, never has it been so quick and easy to change the design of your website. Simply select a theme and upload it to your WordPress dashboard.
Themes are a cost effective way to buy a website design. A bespoke design that meets the standards of many themes online would cost thousands to produce. Since themes can be downloaded and used multiple times, businesses are able to buy a file of the theme for anything from £35 to £100 upwards.
Plugins
Plugins are very much like themes in the sense that you can purchase a snippet of code and upload it onto your website. Once a plugin is installed the additional functionality or backend options will appear instantaneously.
Again, since plugins can be sold in large quantities, you are able to buy advanced snippets for a fraction of the cost such functionality would traditionally cost if you were to hire a developer.
Nowadays you can find a plugin for almost every solution. In the worst case scenario if you cannot, hiring a developer to expand upon and develop an existing plugin is a very cost effective option.
Summary
As you can soon see, there are many benefits to using WordPress and it’s certainly a powerful platform for all to enjoy. As you begin to use WordPress you will soon see what all of the fuss is about, it’s an incredible solution that businesses would be mad not to take advantage of.