Getting into WordPress

WordPress is an open source content management system. 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). Content management system 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 being used by a number of big (by today's standards) online agencies to run their entire websites. Brands such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Reuters, Wired.com, Sony, Toyota, plus some of the biggest artists (such as Beyonce or The Rolling Stones) all use WordPress as the base of their web platforms and outlets.

Undoubtedly, WordPress has evolved a lot over the years, and even though a large number of new functionalities have been introduced, WordPress remains one of the easiest to use web publishing platforms out there.

Originally, WordPress was a fork of an older piece of software named b2/cafelog. WordPress was developed by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, but is now maintained and developed by a team of developers that includes Mullenweg.

What WordPress is good for

There are generally three popular types of websites for which WordPress is meant to be used:

• A normal website with relatively static content, pages, subpages, and so on
• A blog website, chronologically organized and frequently updated, categorized, tagged, and archived
• An e-commerce website, a fully functional online store that allows people to buy goods or services, and the website owner to manage orders and fulfill them

However, as experience shows, these days WordPress is successfully used to run a wide variety of other sites as well, such as:

• Corporate business sites
• One-page profile sites
• Portfolio sites
• Membership sites
• Video blogs
• Photo blogs
• Product sites
• Education sites (e-courses) and more

For those of you unfamiliar with blog websites and blogging terminology, let's take a look at the basics.

Starting the journey – what is a blog?

Originally, the blog was short for weblog. According to Wikipedia, the term weblog was first used in 1997, and people started using blogs globally in 1999. The terms weblog, web blogging, and weblogger were added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2003, though these days most people leave off the we part.

Just to give you a more plain-English explanation, a blog is a website that usually contains regular entries made by an author. These entries can be of various types, such as commentary, descriptions of events, photos, videos, personal remarks, tutorials, case studies, long opinion pieces, political ideas, or whatever else you can imagine. They are usually displayed in a reverse chronological order, with the most recent additions at the top. Those entries can be organized in a variety of ways, by date, topic, subject, and so on.

One of the main characteristics of a blog is that it's meant to be updated regularly. Unlike a website where the content is static, a blog behaves more like an online diary, wherein the blogger posts regular updates. Hence, blogs are dynamic with ever-changing content. A blog can be updated with new content and the old content can be changed or deleted at any time (although deleting content is not a common practice).

Most blogs focus their content on a particular subject, for example, current events, hobbies, niche topics, and technical expertise. This doesn't mean that blogs are meant to be published only by individuals sharing their personal opinions on given matters. On the contrary, these days, blogs have become a major part in the online presence for many businesses and even corporations. The modern practice of content marketing is now one of the most widely accepted web marketing methods, and its core is based on publishing quality content, often in the blog form.