A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress
WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) and powers over twenty-five percent of the web. Your WordPress developer will be able to install one of the easiest-to-use CMS in the world for you. WordPress is coded using PHP and MySQL, a common combination in the world of web development. WordPress was developed by computer programmers Mike Little from Stockport, UK and Matt Mullenweg from the USA. The first version of WordPress was released in May 2003.
There are many themes that your developer can use to change the look and feel of your WordPress website. These themes are created by the WordPress community and made available as open source software. Many themes are responsive, which means that they adapt to the device that the user is using to view the website. These devices include smartphones and tablets, as well as the more traditional laptop and desktop computers. A lot of these themes are free of charge. However, ‘premium’ themes are available at a cost. If you want something a bit more custom-designed, a good WordPress developer can create a bespoke theme for you. Also, if you wish to make changes to an existing theme, this can also be done.
Another feature of WordPress websites is the plugin. Plugins are pieces of software that allow certain functionality, such as comment spam filtering, SEO, web accessibility features or cookie messages (in some countries, websites must warn the user if the site uses cookies). Your WordPress developer will be able to install plugins for you, or you could do this yourself. Themes and plugins are easily installed from within the WordPress ‘dashboard’.
It is possible to use WordPress for an online shop, and indeed many businesses do. Popular plugin WooCommerce can be used for this. WooCommerce is used for eighteen percent of online shopping carts worldwide.
There are two versions of WordPress. WordPress.com involves your website being hosted by WordPress (for free, but there are extras you can pay for). WordPress.com is a blogging platform and does not have the customisation facilities of the other version of WordPress. Also, WordPress.com sites have advertisements – this is how Automattic (the company that owns WordPress.com) makes money.
WordPress.org is the ‘real’ open-source WordPress. Sometimes called self-hosted WordPress, WordPress.org requires you to get hosting from a web hosting company for your site. You download the files and configure the database (which is easy to do) then WordPress installs itself for you. WordPress.org is fully customisable and has thousands of different themes and plugins for you to add to your website. Any website you create using the self-hosted WordPress.org software is 100% owned by you, and so is the content uploaded to these websites. WordPress.org is owned by the WordPress Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, which gets money mostly from donations.
Here are a few tips to help you make the most of WordPress:
• Use the TwentyTwenty plugin to create ‘before and after’ images.• Use the plugin Admin Menu Manager to organise your menus in the admin dashboard.• The HTML Syntax Highlighter will highlight the code like a text editor, making it easier for you to add code and content to your web pages. This is useful if you use the WordPress text editor rather than the WYSIWYG editor.• It is possible to add voice search to your WordPress website.
A lot more is possible with this flexible CMS.
In conclusion, WordPress is one of the most user-friendly CMS on the planet. It powers 60 million websites worldwide.
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