Ravi Singh
Our beginner-friendly introduction to WordPress will cover the most essential things you need to know.
Let’s go!
Table of Contents
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular website building tool in the world. It can be used to make your blog, website, e-commerce store and much more.
It powers more than 43% of all websites. That’s almost half of the websites on the entire internet! This amazing tool is used by everyone from individuals to governments and large multinational corporations.
In more technical terms, it is the world’s most widely used Content Management System (CMS). It is free and open-source, so anyone can modify, improve and extend its underlying software.
WordPress allows you to make any kind of website you want without knowing any programming.
What WordPress offers is essentially website building accessible to everyone.
In summary, WordPress is a powerful website-building tool and is the simplest way for you to build any website you want.
WordPress Is a Content Management System
WordPress falls under the Content Management System (CMS) category of software. A CMS basically lets users make, manage, edit, and modify website content without knowing any computer programming.
CMS is a prevalent type of software that allows anyone to benefit from what would otherwise be very difficult and time-consuming development work. These systems create simple interfaces where users can:
- Publish digital content
- Edit existing content
- Organize their websites
- Add, edit, and delete pages from a website
- Quickly set a theme for their websites
- Extend features using thousands of plugins
Instead of building a website from scratch with code, users just click on premade options that do all the coding for them. In addition, it comes with plugins and integrations that add even more functionality. CMS allows users to focus on building their website content instead of the underlying technical work.
There are dozens of reasonably popular content management systems on the market. However, with over 500 million websites running WordPress, it outperforms them all by a massive margin.
What’s the Difference Between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
One thing that confuses many newcomers to WordPress is knowing the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com because of their similar names.
In simple terms:
- WordPress.org is the free, open-source website building software used by millions of websites worldwide, including this one. You can install it on any web host you want to create a website 100% owned and controlled by you. It is also called self-hosted WordPress. This is what we use on our website.
- WordPress.com is a paid, blog hosting service which runs the WordPress.org software. It’s easier to use, but you lose a lot of the flexibility of WordPress.org. It is owned by Automattic, a company founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Most people prefer WordPress.org for complete control and freedom of their website.
When people say “WordPress”, they are almost always talking about self-hosted WordPress available at WordPress.org.
On this website, when I say “WordPress”, I’m talking about WordPress.org.
What Kind of Websites Can WordPress Make?
Back when it was first launched in 2003, WordPress was originally a tool for creating and maintaining blogs rather than traditional websites. However, with the development of the WordPress core code and an immense library of plugins and themes over time, today, you can create any type of website imaginable with WordPress.
You can use it to:
- Start a blog
- Create a business website
- Make an online store
- Build an online community
- Launch a multilingual site
- …and much more!
Websites can be built for commercial purposes, as non-profits, or even just a hobby. Many people build a website as a hobby and then offer their members valuable products and services.
What Do You Need to Start Using WordPress?
To start using WordPress, you only need two things: website hosting and a domain name.
Website hosting is where all your website files are stored on a computer (a server) that is connected to the internet. Web hosting is required for all websites.
A domain name is your website address on the internet where others can go to find you. Examples include wpnexus.com (this website), google.com, wordpress.org and millions of others.
Putting them both together, you can consider a website to be your house and a domain name as your street address.
To start using WordPress, you only need two things: website hosting and a domain name
Fortunately, getting a website hosting account and domain name are both very easy. For the web hosting account, you need to sign up with a web hosting provider. Most hosting providers also allow you to register a domain name as well.
If you’ve never built a website before, we recommend ChemiCloud hosting. They offer affordable and reliable hosting for beginners with a 45-day money-back guarantee.
Who Else Uses WordPress?
In addition to individual bloggers, website developers and small businesses, WordPress is also used by thousands of companies, big and small. Some of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the world also use WordPress.
It is also used by universities, governments, non-profits and much more.
Here are some businesses and organizations using WordPress.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is one of the biggest stars in the world! She uses a custom WordPress website to give information about her albums, connect with her fans, link to her online shop and much more.
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is high-tech media company specializing in coverage on the latest apps, gadgets and startups. It also features breaking news, inside interviews and much more on their full-featured website.
NASA
One of the pioneers of space exploration, NASA is the US Government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Whether it’s deep space exploration or distant galaxies at the edge of the universe, NASA’s website has a treasure trove of information on the latest developments in space exploration.
IBM
As one of the largest technology companies in the world, IBM’s Careers Blog is powered by WordPress. It features many inspirational stories of the ever-evolving technology landscape and how IBM is addressing its future needs from a diverse talent pool.
Sony
The Sony PlayStation Blog is the source of news for PlayStation gamers and acts as a hub connecting everyone across all social media platforms. It’s home to all the hottest new and upcoming games, cool behind the scenes details and so much more!
WordPress FAQs
Who Created WordPress?
WordPress was created by computer programmers Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little back in 2003.
It was created as a fork of an existing blogging tool called b2/cafelog.
Although it was initially created as a blogging platform, WordPress evolved over the years to a CMS and eventually into a fully-featured website building platform. It can now be used for blogging, e-commerce shops, membership sites and basically anything else you can imagine.
WordPress now powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet.
What Are the Key Advantages of Using WordPress Over Other Platforms?
When it comes to making your own website, there are dozens of different platforms available. To a complete beginner, it can be daunting to figure out the strengths, weaknesses, features and benefits.
Overall, relative to its alternatives, WordPress offers strong advantages in 3 key areas:
Open Source
As an open-source platform, users can freely view, copy, modify, and distribute the WordPress source code. This benefit is why so many of the other benefits we are about to discuss exist.
If you’re highly skilled, you can customize WordPress sites endlessly and achieve great new things. Even if you’re a beginner, you have free access to the work of others.
WordPress is regularly updated to become more highly functional and secure. Patches continually:
- Address emerging cyber security threats
- Improve website performance
- Introduce new features
- Improve old features
Scalability
WordPress is suitable for websites of all sizes. Beginners can use WordPress to quickly make a simple site with a few pages. There isn’t a steep learning curve, and you don’t need to make a big investment.
As your online presence and business grow, you can simply add more pages to your WordPress site so that it can grow with them. It’s an easy website builder to use.
Similar things can be said about enhancing website functionality on WordPress. Want to add a new function? Just search in the WordPress plugin directory for one of tens of thousands of free plugins.
Another benefit of its popularity is that many external integrations are possible with WordPress.
Popularity
You shouldn’t choose one product over another simply because it’s more popular. But for software solutions, popularity comes with a significant benefit. The number of people who know how to use WordPress is higher than the number of other CMS solutions.
When it comes time to scale your website, you can learn to do that on your own, or you can hire someone to help. You can easily hire or contract help for WordPress development or other WordPress tasks. The marketplace for their skills is massive and competitive.
Lastly, there is a huge online community built around solving WordPress-related challenges and goals. You can find a wealth of tutorials and guides for even the most niche use cases.
What Are the Disadvantages of Using WordPress?
Whereas we have discussed the advantages of using WordPress in considerable detail, however, there are some disadvantages to using WordPress as well:
- Learning the basics takes some time in WordPress. You will need to learn how to find and install themes, plugins, updates, etc.
- You will also have to make backups of your website, setup basic security and do routine maintenance.
- You will also have to be careful with which themes and plugins you decide to install. Always go with free, high-quality plugins when possible to avoid spending money on features you won’t need.
The great news is that it’s easy to learn all these skills and with some time and practice, you will become more proficient with WordPress.
Is Programming Required to Use WordPress?
No, programming knowledge isn’t required to use WordPress.
You can create a fast, modern, beautiful website without knowing any HTML or CSS whatsoever. WordPress has thousands of high-quality themes and plugins that let you control every aspect of your website without knowing any programming at all.
However, it can be helpful if you have an understanding of HTML, CSS and programming concepts if you want to become a WordPress developer.