What Is WordPress ?

WordPress is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 42.7% of all the websites on the Internet. Yes- more than one in four websites that you visit.

On a slightly more technical level, WordPress is an open source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free.

A Content Management System is basically a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website like content without needing to know anything about programming.

The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone even people who aren't developer's.

What kind of websites can WordPress make?

Many years ago, WordPress was primarily a tool to create a blog, rathe than more traditional websites. That hasn't been true for a long time, though. Nowadays, thanks to changes to the core code, as well as WordPress massive ecosystem of plugins and themes, you can create any type of website with WordPress.

For example, not only does WordPress power a huge number of business sites and blogs, it's also the most popular way to create an eCommerce store as well. With WordPress. You can create :

• Business Websites
• eCommerce Stores
• Blogs
• Portfolios
• Resumes
• Forums
• Social Networks
• Membership Sites
• pretty much anything else you can dream up.

Here's how to install a WordPress theme.

WordPress.org vs WordPress.com

We've covered the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com in a lot more detail, but here's the short version.

• 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.

Most of the time, when people say "WordPress", they mean the self hosted WordPress available at WordPress.org. If you want to truly own your website, self-hosted WordPress.org is almost always the best option.

All you need to do to get started with self hosted WordPress is a WordPress hosting service and a domain name.