Hello readers!. I’ll start this article with a simple question. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the term ‘Wordpress’? Some of you may know it to be a platform for building websites and publishing blogs. For the rest, I’ll try to provide a brief intro to Wordpress and its capabilities.
At its core, Wordpress is one of the easiest and most popular way to create your own websites and blogs. As a matter of fact more than 40% of the websites available on the internet are powered by Wordpress which means that more one in three websites you visit on the internet is made using Wordpress. On a rather technical level, Wordpress is an open source Content Management System (CMS) licensed under GPLv2 which means that any user is permitted to use the software for free.
A Content Management System is a tool that basically helps you to manage important content on your website without needing to know any programming language. For this reason, Wordpress is popular for building websites because even if you’re not from a programming background you can still build a website. Now everyone needs to know what does it mean when we say open source and GPLv2. Put simply the source code of the Wordpress software is available for every one to see and GPLv2 means that the source code is licensed in way to ensure that the software is free for all and every one has the freedom to use and modify the software as desired provided, any modifications they make are also made available under the GPLv2 license
Coming back to Wordpress, many years ago Wordpress was just a tool to create blogs rather than websites but that changed over the past few years. Today you can create any kind of website using Wordpress thanks to the massive streams of plugins and themes. It is also the perfect tool for creating e-commerce stores and not just to build and publish blogs in simple steps. Furthermore, It is the easiest CMS available for both experienced and novice users. Since WordPress has gained popularity in recent years, complexity around it has also grown. Many newbies can get lost or confused while starting their own blog on Wordpress. So we try to answer some common questions.
What type of Websites can you create with Wordpress?
- Business websites
- eCommerce stores
- Forums
- Blogs
- Portfolios and many more
What is difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
Now you may see two Wordpress sites–Wordpress.org and WordPress.com every time you google Wordpress. What is the difference between these two and which one should I choose will be a big dilemma for a beginner. Like in the previous paragraphs, I mentioned something about open source software and have even mentioned that Wordpress is an open source software. In this case, WordPress.org often referred as the self hosted Wordpress, is the free open source software that you can install on your own server to create your own WordPress website. Whereas WordPress.com is a for-profit, paid service that is powered by WordPress.org.
Why should you choose Wordpress?
This question has many answers. I already mentioned Wordpress powers over 40% of the total websites which are available on the internet which includes well known companies and entities like Microsoft and even the White House. Now these are the well established names that use WordPress, but why should you choose Wordpress still remains the question. Well, regardless of what website you want to create, there are a number of reasons to choose wordpress and here are the most important ones:
1. Wordpress is free and open source.
The most important reason is that Wordpress is free open source software, although you will need to pay a small amount for the domain and hosting to make it live on the internet as we covered in an earlier https://neurobyte.in/how-to-create-a-diy-website-in-rs-2500/. But if you are just looking to learn you can even host in your local machine and play around with the plugins and themes for hands-on practice before attempting a live website.
2. Easy to Install.
You don’t have to be a tech savy person or a programmer to install Wordpress on your machine. Installing Wordpress is just few button clicks and you’re ready to go. You can easily download on any machine and since you will be building a website from scratch you may want to have a safe space to experiment with all the variety of plugins and themes, you can always go for XAMPP software which helps you host your website on your machine itself rather than on the internet.
3. Wordpress is expandable.
WordPress.org offers a wide range of free themes and plugins to use and see what looks good for your website. Appropriate selection of themes and plugins might make your website standout from the others. With only a few plugins, you can easily create e-commerce websites and start getting businesses easily.
4. SEO Friendly.
WordPress websites can be easily ranked on Google search with the help of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Wordpress even provides plugins for that too which can help you increase rank on Google by following some simple steps.
5. Wordpress is flexible.
Wordpress is great because it lets you create any type of website you want and your website can evolve with you with time. You can even connect your social media, forums, contact forms all this with just adding a few plugins.
6. Easy to find help.
Since Wordpress is a very popular tool it’s easy to find help online if you run into any issues. There are plenty of Blogs, Forums, Tutorials, Developers, Groups and so on so there is always someone you can turn to for help. There are both free to use community sites as well as paid tutorials and support
To conclude Wordpress is the most popular way to build a website whether it is a blog, a corporate website or even an e-commerce site. It is quick and easy to learn. You can choose between self hosted Wordpress.or and host it on WordPress.com. In our opinion self hosted is usually more cost effective to get started.
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