Blog/What is WordPress
24th January 2020
Lots of people ask me about WordPress, wondering what it is and what it allows them to do with their website that they might not be able to do without it. So I thought I’d write a little blog about it in the hope it might answer some of the more common questions people might have.
Firstly, what is it? Well, it’s a content management system. (a series of files and database(s) that link together to provide you with admin functionality for your website without having to get stuck into the code every time you want to update it.
WordPress is free!
It’s free, and it’s so popular around a third of the world’s websites are built around it.
It prides itself on being super easy to use, so that even the newest of noob could navigate their way around it once it’s up and running.
It is very versatile. It was designed as a blogging platform, but it’s now used to power very complex, multinational corporate websites, as well as still catering for those who want a simple blog.
Plugins – what your website does
One of its main benefits is that with it, comes a wealth of ‘plugins’ – little add-ons that you can quickly plug in to your site to allow it to have extra functionality. These are pretty much infinite and allow you to do pretty much anything you can do with a website, with your website with little or no programming experience.
Themes – how your website looks
When it comes to appearance, it’s a similar vibe to functionality. There’s an unlimited amount of ‘themes’ that a wealth of skilled web designers have developed to allow you to style your website in a thousand different ways – again without any requirement for coding knowledge.
WordPress and SEO
Thirdly, and just as importantly as the functionality and appearance of your site is that WordPress sites perform well with SEO, so you know that if you put together your site using the building blocks WordPress affords you, then people will be able to find your site when they do a Google (or similar!) search.
Will I be supported?
And finally, there is an enormous WordPress support community, and so if you get into difficulty, or if you have a query there are always people out there who have either had and solved your problem before, or there’s an expert ready and willing to help.
So that’s it in a nutshell. I like it. It’s not at the coalface of cutting edge web technology and so some web design snobs don’t much like it, but if it does what you need it to, it does it well and it’s cost effective, then it’s okay by me!