What is WordPress? How does WordPress Work?
If you want to build your own website, you can never go wrong with WordPress. Presently, it hosts over 19 million websites on the global level and holds 60% of the market share. As a flexible, powerful CMS, WordPress powers more than 37% of all sites that make it a leading platform. In this article we will learn about What is WordPress? How does WordPress Work?
With the above statistics, it would not be surprising if website owners, developers, or designers would look for how WordPress works and what it is.
Although at the first glance, it can be intimidating; WordPress is much easier to understand. After a brief introduction, you will be able to create a stunning website quickly and easily and customize it to meet your exact needs.
Given the importance of WordPress to anyone who's inserted, now it just about understands how WordPress works to learn how to maximize it and reach one's goal.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a reputed and renowned Content Management System or CMS, a platform that is used to build and maintain without any coding knowledge. This amazing software lets you customize every aspect of your website.
In 2003 the first version of WordPress was created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Initially, it was started as a simple platform designed for those people who are looking to create a basic blog and host it on the Internet. Today, it has become an excellent website platform by which you can create any kind of website from e-commerce to business and portfolio websites.
It is designed with flexibility and usability that makes it a great solution for both large and small websites.
Officially, there are two versions of WordPress software- WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The major difference between both of them is that for the .com, one begins at a place where he has a site with some degree of functionality available and .org, one creates a site from scratch including installation of the plug-in.
Generally, beginners get confused about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Let's understand how they both are different:
WordPress is an open-source software package; it is free to everyone across the world.
And, WordPress.org is the central location for the WordPress software. You can easily download it, view the document, ask and answer questions in the forums and many more.
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WordPress.com is basically a service which offers websites that run on WordPress. You can simply sign up for a free account and get a fully functioning website. But with the free account, you will be allowed to use a subdomain of WordPress.
The free version provides you with everything that is required to run a website. When you are ready to step into the realm of advanced customization, with your domain name and other options, then you can go for the premium version or get your own hosting plan.
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WordPress is managed by a core development team and is supported by an international community of independent open source designers and programmers.
The core development team takes care of software updates including feature improvements, the security of any potential code vulnerability. And, the open-source community support with instant knowledge and support for enhancement and bug fixes, etc.
How does WordPress Work?
WordPress requires two components to work on your web, PHP and MySQL.
PHP is the language WordPress is written on it that makes it dynamic. The server-side language, PHP runs on your web server before a page is served to the browser. No doubt, if we say that PHP is one of the most popular languages on the web, partly because of the popularity of WordPress itself.
It works perfectly at adding information to databases and extracting information from them according to the given criteria.
MySQL is an open-source relational database managed system that can be linked to working with a complex spreadsheet that files under various headings.
With WordPress, users get access to the database where all kinds of data can be created, updated, deleted and read. MySQL is extremely fast at responding to queries and it has become the second most used database management system in the world. To have a better grasp of how WordPress works, go through the given points.
WordPress works on three levels:
It provides an easy interface for website owners to manage their content database
WordPress creates MySQL queries for the database, gets the information and publishes the page with required data on the path when requested by a browser.
Word Press brings variety through its themes, plugins and shortcodes that allow you to get the freedom to make any change in the site according to your needs.
WordPress brings all content in the MySQL database. Now how that information is present on the web it depends on the theme. There are plenty of themes available on WordPress, you can check them easily. The super powerful and flexible WordPress CMS lets you make changes in the theme without messing with the site's content.
Now, you can access WordPress on three different levels:
The user-facing site which is accessed when someone visits a path managed by the WordPress- be it a blog, a page or a list.
The admin area or the Dashboard is accessible whenever you log-in to WordPress as an administrator.
WordPress's own files on the server contain the files with the actual WordPress code along with theme feels, CSS, plugins files and more.
Take your time and try to understand each point to know WordPress well and create your professional website.
Elements of WordPress
Dashboard
You can access your WordPress Dashboard by adding the /wp-admin to the URL of your website. When you work from your site's Dashboard, it is referred to as working in the Back-End of your website.
Again, there are two parts in WordPress, the Public and the Private.
The front end of the website is what the site visitors see in their browsers and the backend is where you manage your content.
WordPress Plugin
A WordPress plugin is a package of additional code that you can upload to your site and add new features, functionality and integrations.
Plugins can be added through the Plugins menu in your WordPress dashboard.
Through the built-in search function, you can browse through the free plugins available on the WordPress.org Plugin directory
Plugins can also be packaged as zip files that you need to upload through the Plugins menu uploaded in your WordPress dashboard.
Plugins add extra functionality; it can mean anything from a simple message in the footer to a full-blown SEO or performance plugin.
There are plenty of plugins that can work ideal for every site to install. These include backup plugins, performance plugins, security plugins, and SEO plugins. All of these will make your website run smoothly and become more effective. There are various free plugins that you can use; they include all these functions that you can find in the WordPress plugin directory.
WordPress Themes
WordPress brings a wide range of themes from free to premium versions. You can create any website even you do not have any previous experience in coding. A lot of WordPress theme come up with multiple colour choices, layouts and designs, SEO optimization option to choose from.
The theme you choose determines the look of your website. The theme consists of PHP files with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS all working together to display your website with an eye-catching view. You do not need to take stress about messing up your content when updating your website; you can easily make changes in your theme without affecting the content.
Why is WordPress in the leading position?
WordPress is dominating this industry for various good reasons. Here are some major reasons:
WordPress is free so anyone can download it right now without any investment.
Being an open-source platform, WordPress is a community project that is developed by thousands of volunteers around the globe. Everyone is free to participate here and built upon WordPress. A lot of people make a contribution to developing WordPress.
WordPress is modern and comes up with many latest features. If you find some feature on a website unique, you can be sure that WordPress has it.
Another advantage is its versatility. You can run any type of website on WordPress. Whether you have a simple business site, a photo site, a blog, a professional corporate site or a wedding site, WordPress is able to handle it all.
When it comes to accessibility and user-friendliness, WordPress is in a win-win situation. It can be used by users with impaired vision with no problem.
WordPress is fully extensible. You can add custom features to WordPress with the help of plugins. Today there are thousands of free and premium design packages available for WordPress. Browse through them and install in a single click.
Bottom Line
WordPress works in a different way, this is a content management system that uses a combination of some core files, a database and some additional files that you can add for themes, plugins as well as uploads. The WordPress admin screens make it possible to access all these without involving in any coding part.
The best part about WordPress is that you can create a fully-customized website and manage with no prior knowledge necessary. Start building your own site for your business, blog, portfolio or online store without further ado.
We hope you found this post on WordPress and how it works. If we have missed any important point in this guidance or you have any question, just let us know in the comment section below. We will give our best to work on your query.
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