WordPress is a hugely popular system for creating websites that has been around since the early 2000s. If you are new to WordPress and want to know more, our beginners guide to WordPress will cover everything you need to know.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free content management system (CMS) that allows users to create blogs and websites without coding experience. Users are able to create, edit and manage pages, posts and other content via a password protected admin section, that features a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows creation of web pages without any coding knowledge.

WordPress comes in two types – wordpress.com and wordpress.org. WordPress.com is a free ‘lite’ online version of WordPress that is hosted by WordPress itself. Great if you want to get a free blog up and running in just a few minutes, but more limited if you want to create larger, professional websites. WordPress.org is an open source, free, downloadable piece of software, that you download and then host yourself. It is famously quick and easy to install – many hosting companies offer one click installs from their account dashboards. This version allows complete create control over your site and is the version we will be focusing on in the article.

What are the benefits?

WordPress is an open source CMS. Anyone can download and use it for free. It is one of the most popular website platforms, currently powering over 40% of the world’s websites. It is quick to learn and easy to use, but its huge range of features and extensive plugin library make it extremely powerful as well.

Benefits of WordPress include:

• Free to use
• Easy to learn
• Great for blogging
• SEO built in
• User comments feature with built-in moderation
• Thousands of free and premium themes to choose from
• Huge plugin library to add extra features to your site
• Lots of help and support online

A brief history

WordPress was founded in 2003 as a blogging platform by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. The blogging software they had been using b2/cafelog had been discontinued, so they designed to build a new platform on top of and in so doing starting the foundations of one of the most successful website creation platforms in the world.

WordPress quickly grew From ITS simple beginnings as a blogging platform. In 2004 version 1.2 allows users to create their own plugins for WordPress and share them with others. This willingness to open to the community and the adaptability of the new system meant WordPress became hugely popular.

With each new release more features were added, improves to the admin, editor and features with each release made it more and move valuable as a tool.

In 2010 Automattic, the company founded by co-founder Matt Mullenweg transferred ownership of the WordPress trademark and logo to the WordPress Foundation which was an important step, as it mean’t WordPress was no longer tied to one company or group of developers and could continue to grow and develop independently. The same year WordPress 3.0 was released which was a major step forward in functionality for WordPress that started with establish it as a full CMS and not just a blogging platform. The introduction of custom post types and other related features gave theme developers a whole new set of tools to enable the easy creation of multiple types of websites both commercial and personal.

In 2018 a brand new editor was released that completely changes the way users add and edit content on their sites. The project, initially known as Gutenberg, now simple the Block Editor was a major step forward in making WordPress a user-friendly content management system.

Since then WordPress has continues to grow and it remains a popular as ever, with nearly half of the world’s websites running on WordPress!

Should you choose WordPress for your business website?

WordPress is an excellent tool for both tech professionals, business owners and content creators alike. Its huge number of plugins and themes and the wealth of information and support available online make it a great choice for your business website.

• It makes it easy for you to update your own website
• You will be able to update and maintain your website easily without learning any code.
• WordPress has been running for many years and it has a large, friendly online community and a wealth of advice, tips and support online.
• There are a huge number of free and premium theme available for WordPress
• It is hugely customisable
• It is search engine friendly

If you don’t have the time or skills to create your own website, Bridget Designs are an experienced web design studio who design and build beautiful, effective websites for all sorts of different companies. Take a look at our Web Design Services page to find out more, or get in touch with us for a no obligation chat.

About the Author

Bridget is the owner and founder of Bridget Designs

She is an experienced web designer, front end and WordPress developer, graphic designer and illustrator with a background in fine art, digital art.