What is WordPress? At its core, WordPress is one of the simplest and most popular ways to create your own website or blog. Currently, WordPress powers around 36% of all the websites on the Internet. Thats around 1 in 4 websites you visit.
For the more technical explanation, WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2. This means anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system (CMS) is a tool that makes it far easier to manage important aspects of your website without needing to know anything about programming or coding.
WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone – even people who aren’t developers.
What Kinds Of Websites Can WordPress Make?
When WordPress first started it was primarily a tool to create a blog site. That hasn’t been the case for a long time, though. Due to changes in the way WordPress works and the ease of installing new plugins and themes you can create any type of website with WordPress.
WordPress Powerades a huge number of business sites and blogs but it is also one of the most popular ways of creating an online store (e-commerce) thanks to the WooCommerce Plugin.
Here are some other thing you can build with WordPress
- Business websites
- eCommerce stores
- Blogs
- Portfolios
- Resumes
- Forums
- Social networks
- Membership sites
- And many more!
Get one month free Hosting for WordPress Use code “blog” on checkout
What’s The Difference Between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
- WordPress.org, often called self-hosted WordPress, is the free, open-source WordPress software that you can install on your own web host to create a website that’s 100% your own.
- WordPress.com is a for-profit, paid service that is powered by the WordPress.org software. It’s simple to use, but you lose much of the flexibility of the self-hosted WordPress.
90% of the time when people say “WordPress”, they mean the self-hosted WordPress available at WordPress.org.
Self-hosted WordPress.org is almost always the best option.
All you need to do to get started with self-hosted WordPress is purchase web hosting and a domain name. Use code “blog” on checkout for 1 month free!
Who Uses WordPress?
WordPress is used by individuals, big businesses, and everyone in between! The very site that you’re looking at right now is powered by WordPress – We use it!. Lots of other well-known entities use WordPress as well. Here are some of our favorite examples:
Whitehouse.gov
The official Whitehouse.gov website is powered by WordPress.
Microsoft
Microsoft uses WordPress to power its official blog. It also uses WordPress to power blogs for specific products like Windows and Skype.
The Rolling Stones
Even famous bands love WordPress! The Rolling Stones’ website is powered entirely by WordPress.
Why You Should Use WordPress?
Around 36% of all the websites on the Internet are using WordPress, including well-known entities like the White House and Microsoft.
WordPress Is Free And Open Source
One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is that it’s free, open-source software. While you will need to pay a little bit for hosting, you will never have to pay just to use the WordPress software, which isn’t the case with alternatives like Squarespace or WIX.
WordPress Is Extensible
You don’t have to be a developer or web guru to be able to change and modify your site on the fly. This is because WordPress has a huge range of plugins and themes that you can install and use on your site. Some of them are Free, some of them you have to pay for
Plugins: These let you change how your website functions, for example, you could add a contact form or create an eCommerce store.
Themes: These change how you website looks, we reccomend taking at look at the Futurio Theme – It’s what out site runs!
There are over 50,000 free WordPress plugins and 5,000 free WordPress Themes as well as tons of premium options.
WordPress Is Easy To Install
Think you need to be a tech genius to create your own website? Think again! If you can click a few buttons, you can install WordPress on your site.
You can follow our guide here: Installing WordPress
