What Is WordPress and How Does It Work

The old days of creating websites from scratch are over. You no longer need to call a web developer to make the slightest change. Indeed, creating and updating your website this day has become easier than ever with the help of CMSs.

A CMS, also known as a content management system, is what has allowed the internet to flourish. Small companies, as well as starting bloggers, can now easily own their personal websites without having to spend all that money on maintenance and support.

But what exactly makes a CMS so special?

Unlike the old way of working with websites, a CMS can be used without any knowledge of coding. Yep, you heard it. With a CMS you can create new content, update existing content and even modify the looks of your website all without having to write a single line of code. All you do is click around.

You can look at a CMS as a piece of software that you learn to use only once. It’s similar to learning how to use Microsoft Word or email, for example. You learn MS Word and then use it to create pieces of text over and over again.

What is WordPress?

So what is WordPress?

There exist many different CMSs, but the one we are going to talk about here will be WordPress. Why WordPress, you may ask?

WordPress is the most popular CMS out there and is my CMS of choice. It’s completely free to use and it is the only CMS that I will recommend to you. In fact, this very blog that you are on at the moment is running on WordPress.

WordPress has many advantages over other CMSs that I will now briefly talk about.

WordPress – the most popular CMS

According to Digital.com, 26% of all internet websites use WordPress as their CMS. Also, according to WebsiteSetup, 60% of all used Content Management Systems on the internet are WordPress.

Numbers speak louder than words. But why exactly is WordPress so popular?

Ease of use

I first got to know WordPress when I began to work as a web developer. At that moment, I had no idea what WordPress was, or any other CMS, for that matter. Nevertheless, it was really straightforward to learn to use unlike some of the other CMSs that I later had to deal with.

Watching a few tutorials on YouTube and one hour of practice were more than enough for me to understand the way things work in the CMS.

And if you do need some help with any part of WordPress, whether it is the admin dashboard or programming code, you can easily find all of the answers to your questions online. That’s one other important benefit of using such a popular CMS.

Plugins and themes

Because WordPress is so popular, it has pretty much an infinite amount of plugins and themes that you can install on your website. Most of them are either free or have a “light” free version.

That’s the thing with WordPress. As already mentioned, you don’t need to code anything if you don’t want to. You can use the code that other people have already created, in the form of plugins and themes.

Themes, depending on what your business is, make your website look a certain way. Whether you have a blog, an e-commerce website, or anything else, a great theme can help you stand out and make your website more user-friendly.

On the other hand, an ugly or not-so-user-friendly theme can hurt your business. Fortunately though, because installing a theme on WordPress requires no coding, you can pick themes and play for as long as you want, until you find the one that suits you most. In the days of coding, this simply would not be possible because it takes time to design a new theme.

It’s quite similar with plugins as well.

A plugin is a piece of code that is pre-written for you that performs a certain action on your website. Maybe you want to have a fancy contact form on your blog or you are looking to make it more secure. Well, there is a plugin for both of the cases. In fact, there is a plugin for pretty much anything in regards to blogging. And as already mentioned, a lot of them are free.

You search for a plugin you want, you install it, and if it’s good, you leave it. If not, you simply delete it and look for a new plugin.

You probably now have a better picture of what is WordPress and what makes it so popular.

Easy installation

One other thing that makes WordPress so easy to work with is its super easy installation. In fact, many hosting providers, such as the one that I use and recommend – Bluehost – offers a one-click installation of WordPress when first setting up your website. Yep, it’s as easy as one click.

If you want to install WordPress at home on your local computer just to play around with and get to know how to use it, it’s a little more complicated than one click, but nevertheless still very simple. Worry not, I have instructions on how to do it here.

The CMS is constantly updated

Because WordPress is so famous and used all over the world, the community in charge of WordPress makes sure that it is constantly updated and improved. So this means you will never have to worry about being behind on the internet trends.

Moreover, because the CMS is updated often, so have to be its themes and plugins in order to work properly. All of this creates a lot of competition between the theme and plugin developers, which in turn means that you get to use only the best pieces of software, the ones that are able to be at the top of the list.

Fully customizable

Earlier I mentioned that in order to use WordPress, you don’t need to know how to code. However, if you do want to modify something, you have the possibility to do so.

Unlike many of the existing blogging platforms, your WordPress website is 100% customizable. This means that you can change how your blog looks and works on the code level. If you know how to, you can even create your own theme or plugin, which means that you pretty much can do anything with your website/blog.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now understand what WordPress is and how it functions, at least to an extent.

Of course, there are many more benefits that WordPress has over other CMSs, but these were the ones that I wanted to share with you here in this post. Either way, the only way to find out whether WordPress is the right system for you or not is by using it, which I hope I have been able to convince you to do.

If you have any questions about WordPress or blogging in general, feel free to shoot me an email or leave a comment down below in the comment section. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for stopping by and good luck!

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What Is WordPress and How Does It Work – For Beginners

What is WordPress?