WordPress is an open source CMS. Open source means that the source code of the system is made available with a license whereby the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose (as Wikipedia defines it). CMS means a software application that can run a website (for example, a blog) and allows you to publish, edit, and modify the content. It's a piece of software that lives on the web server (more on what a web server is later on) and makes it easy for you to add and edit posts, themes, comments, and all of your other content. The following is the logo of WordPress:

Even though WordPress was originally a blog engine—used primarily to run blogs—it's now a popular solution among some of the biggest brands on the web and runs their entire websites. Brands such as The New...

If you are new to the world of blogging (sometimes called the blogosphere, which is a fairly popular expression these days), you may want to familiarize yourself with the following common terms.

Each entry in the blog is called a post. Every post usually has a number of different parts. Of course, the two most obvious parts are the title and content. The content is text, images, links, and so on. Posts can even contain multimedia (for example, videos and audio files). Every post also has a publication timestamp, and most have one or more categories and tags assigned to them. It is these posts, or entries, that are often displayed in reverse chronological order on the main page of the blog...

WordPress is not the only publishing platform out there, but it has an awful lot to offer. In the following sections, I've called attention to WordPress's most outstanding features.

The main benefits of WordPress summarized are:

• WordPress gives you full control over your website. You can change/adjust/modify/customize everything, and I mean everything, about your site.
• There are thousands of themes and plugins to choose from, enabling you to make your website look and work however you wish. WordPress is extremely extendable. Basically, any additional functionality that you can dream of can be added utilizing a plugin that you or your programmer friends can write.
• The day-to-day work with the platform is very easy to grasp. Tasks such as editing content, publishing new articles/posts, or interacting with the audience through comments have no learning...

WordPress, as a platform and as a community of users, has grown in two main areas:

• The first one is gathered around WordPress.org (https://wordpress.org/), the native, main website of the WordPress project
• The other is WordPress.com (https://wordpress.com/), a commercial platform providing both free and paid blogs to users

Essentially, WordPress.org is about developing the platform itself, sharing new plugins, discussing the technical aspects of WordPress, and being all techie in general. WordPress.com is a commercial website where bloggers can meet with each other and publish their blog content under the wordpress.com subdomain (for example, something like paleorecipeslog.wordpress.com is a subdomain).

In Chapter 2, Getting Started with WordPress, we will discuss the differences between hosting your blog on WordPress.com versus working with...

Here is a list of some of the features that WordPress has to offer (in no particular order):

• Exchangeable designs through WordPress themes, which are also further customizable via WordPress Customizer
• Extendable through WordPress plugins

• Unlimited posts and pages
• Unlimited categories and subcategories
• Unlimited tags
• Mobile-friendly and optimized to be viewed on all devices and screen sizes
• Flexible—create any type of website you want
• Scalable—can handle any size of website
• Ability to post via email and mobile devices (there are apps available for all major mobile platforms, including iOS and Android)
• Compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, although it does depend on the theme you're using
• Import of data from other blogs (Moveable Type, b2evolution, Blogger, and others)
• Easy to administer...

One very useful characteristic of WordPress is that it has a large, active, online community. Everything you will ever need for your WordPress website can most likely be found online, and probably for free. In addition to this, these days we can also find many paid resources and training programs that offer expert advice and training, revolving around many different possible usages of a WordPress site:

• https://codex.wordpress.org/: Here you can find the official documentation for WordPress—we'll talk more about the codex later on in this chapter
• https://themeisle.com/blog/: Offers free guidance on common tasks that can be performed with WordPress
• https://www.wpbeginner.com/: Offers tutorials and resources about WordPress

As WordPress is constantly being developed, it's important to keep yourself up-to-date with the software community's latest activities.

If you visit the dashboard of your own WordPress site regularly, you'll be able to stay up-to-date with WordPress news and software releases. There are widgets on the dashboard that display the latest news and announcements, and an alert always appears when there is a new version of WordPress available for download and installation.

If you prefer to visit the website, then the most important spot to visit or subscribe to is WordPress Releases. Whenever there is a new release, be it a major release, or an interim bug fix, or an upgrade, it will be at https://wordpress.org/news/category/releases/.

Also, be sure to stay tuned to the main WordPress blog at https://wordpress.org/news/.

Some additional...

The WordPress Codex is the central repository of all the information that the official WordPress team has published to help people work with WordPress.

The Codex has some basic tutorials for getting started with WordPress, such as a detailed step-by-step discussion of the installation, and lists of every template tag and hook. Throughout this book, I'll be providing links to specific pages within the Codex, which will deliver more or advanced information on the topics in this book.

The Codex can be found at https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page. Refer to the following screenshot:

Apart from the Codex, there's also one more resource that will come in handy to new and experienced developers alike. It's called the WordPress Code Reference, and it can be found at https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/. It delivers a lot of documentation...

The online WordPress community asks questions and responds with solutions on the WordPress forum at https://wordpress.org/support/. It's an excellent place to go if you can't find the answer to a problem in the codex. If you have a question, then probably someone else has had it as well, and WordPress experts spend time in the forum answering them and providing solutions.

There are official directories for themes and plugins on WordPress.org. Though not every theme and plugin is available there, the ones that are, have been vetted by the community and the review teams. Anything you download from these directories is likely to be relatively bug-free. Plugins and themes that you get from other sources can have malicious code, so be careful. You can also see what the community thinks of these downloads by looking at ratings, comments and popularity metrics:

• You can find the Theme Directory at https://wordpress.org/themes/
• The Plugin Directory is located at https://wordpress.org/plugins/

Following is the screenshot for the WordPress Theme Directory:

Having a website of your own is essential these days, no matter if you are an individual or a small business, and no matter if you are blogging regularly or just want some accurate static content up on the internet. In this chapter, we reviewed basic information about WordPress, blogging, and common blog terms for those of you who are new to the concept.

WordPress is an excellent platform that can run your website (blog or otherwise). It's packed with top-of-the-line features and is so flexible that it can really do anything you want, and it has a wealth of online resources. Additionally, it's easy to use, and you need no special skills or prior experience to work with it. Last but not least, it is 100% free!

In the next chapter, we will explore the choices and steps involved in installing WordPress and getting started. We'll cover how to install WordPress...