WordPress provides the most amazing way of creating websites and blogs. More than 34% of the websites are built using WordPress. So, it can be said that this popular content management system is famous for developing blogging sites and websites. Today, WordPress has proudly brought the most supportive and useful blogging community on the web. Thousands of sites (news, updates, resources, training, tutorials— the list is endless) exist which inherit and make use of WordPress. In this tutorial, you will learn about the primary purpose of WordPress and its types and features.
What is WordPress?
WordPress can be defined as an open-source CMS that has been licensed under GPLv2. It means anyone has the right to usandas modify the WordPress software for free. It can be considered a tool that makes the life of content publishers easy to manage an essential portion of the website, like website content and multimedia files in web pages without prior knowledge of web programming. The ultimate result is that WordPress helps develop and build a website handy for anyone, even without a developer's skill set.
Features of WordPress
WordPress is considered to be the most popular content management system due to its characteristics.
- The most important features of WordPress are that you can create a dynamic website without any programming and design knowledge.
- WordPress is theme-based, providing you options for various open-source and premium design themes that can be integrated easily without any designing knowledge.
- Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress, which can be used to add new required modules.
- WordPress sites are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly, which means you can easily optimize the built-in WordPress for search engine listings.
- WordPress is Multilingual, which allows users to translate content into different languages.
- WordPress has an inbuilt Media Management System, which manages images, music, documents, etc., and can be used with text content.
Advantages of WordPress
- WordPress is a free and open-source platform under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
- Design theme customization in WordPress is straightforward.
- It allows you to manage users with different roles and permissions.
- WordPress media management is quick and easy to use.
- WordPress provides a WYSIWYG editor to manage your text content, which is very useful for manipulating the layout of the document.
WordPress.com and WordPress.org
WordPress allows you to host a site in two ways, WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The primary thing that differs between these two approaches is the actual web host. Using WordPress.org, you might download the script free of charge and host it on a local machine or any web server. But, in the case of WordPress.com, it takes care of every aspect, from hosting the site for you to providing features for managing the content. You don't need to set up a web server, pay for hosting, or even download an application, but yes, ads will be shown on your site.
| WordPress.org | WordPress.com |
|---|---|
| It requires a separate web hosting account to run a WordPress site. | You must sign up for an account or create a website or blog. |
| It helps create a free website and is open-source for further modification. | Get basic website functionalities for free and need pay to upgrade for professional site development. |
| You can upload your plugins to extend the functionality. | No Plugin upload allowed. |
| Here, you can use your custom URL. | Free plans will be a sub-domain of WordPress. |
Pros and Cons of WordPress.org and WordPress.com
If you are not paying any interest in hosting or managing a web server, then WordPress.com is the way to go. This is because WordPress.com is free, and setup can be done quickly and easily. However, it will charge you to remove the term WordPress, which will be included in the URL, and you will not be competent enough to upload custom themes and plugins without prior payment for the services. You also cannot edit or modify the backend PHP code.
WordPress.org is a self-hosted version and provides additional flexibility with control on your site. Your self-bought domain name can be used, and themes can be uploaded, plugins can be incorporated. Hence, this gives flexibility and custom control to your web development.
