Date First Published: 1st October 2022
Topic: Web Design & Development
Subtopic: Web Applications
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 4/10
Learn more about what WordPress in this article.
WordPress, sometimes abbreviated to WP, is an open-source CMS written in PHP that provides plugin architecture and a web template system. In 2022, it was estimated that 43% of the World Wide Web was built on WordPress. WordPress makes it much easier for people without any web development knowledge or experience to create a website. This is because it allows people to start from prebuilt templates and themes that have a design that they want instead of hand coding it from scratch using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Users can then edit pages in a WYSIWYG interface, allowing them to create and modify webpages by dragging and dropping elements, representing what they would look like if they were published online. The user interface is simple and user-friendly. Once finished, users can then publish their completed webpage by clicking on the 'Publish' button. If users want to add extra functionality to their site, they can install precoded plugins. Examples of plugins are like buttons, SEO analysers, and form handling services. Most of the plugins are available free of charge, but some premium ones may require a fee. An example of a WordPress site can be seen here.
Some people confuse Wordpress.org with Wordpress.com. They are two different versions of WordPress. Wordpress.org is the open-source CMS that users can install on their web hosts. Anyone can install and use WordPress on their website for free. Wordpress.org does not provide any hosting or domain name registration services.
Wordpress.com is a hosting service provided by Automattic, Inc and helps people build a website using the WordPress software. It is also free to publish a custom website using the wordpress.com subdomain, such as mysite.wordpress.com, but the free hosting comes with limitations. It places WordPress ads on user's websites that they cannot remove, has limited storage space, and users must start with a prebuilt website than creating pages from scratch. They cannot insert scripts or modify pages with the same level of control that a hand-coded website offers and can only install plugins with the paid business plan.
WordPress.com does provide paid hosting that has less limitations, no ads, extra storage space, premium themes, a custom domain name, and gives users more control over their website for a yearly fee. The main difference between the two is where the website is hosted. If someone says that they already have a web host and they are going to install WordPress on it, they are using Wordpress.org. If someone has published a website on WordPress, they are using Wordpress.com.
If a website redirects to the WordPress login page when adding '/wp-admin/' after the domain name, such as 'https://mysite.com/wp-admin/', then the website uses WordPress. If it displays an error 404 page or the homepage, then it doesn't. This method may not work as some websites hide or block access to their login page for security reasons.
Another way of telling if a website uses WordPress is to view the source code of the page, which can be viewed by typing in the address bar: 'view-source:mysite.com'. For example, if the URL was 'https://mysite.com/page.html', to view the source code, you would type 'view-source:https://mysite.com/page.html'. If you find 'wp-content' in the source code to display the path of images, videos, plugins, or themes, then the website is using WordPress.
WordPress was developed by Automattic and first released on 27th May 2003. B2\cafelog, more commonly known as b2 or cafelog, was the predecessor to WordPress and it was estimated that it was installed on around 2000 blogs as of May 2003. It was written in PHP and used with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Even though WordPress is the official successor, another project, called b2evolution, is also in active development.
WordPress was first introduced in May 2003 to create a fork of b2. Christine Selleck Tremoulet, a friend of Mullenweg, suggested the name WordPress. Even though WordPress was mostly developed by the community, WordPress is associated with Automattic, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little were the founders of the WordPress project.
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