What Is WordPress?

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WordPress is an extremely powerful software for building websites. Unlike free website builders which abound on the Internet, WordPress gives you maximum control over your website. 

You get to control how you want your website to look. You can choose from thousands of themes to change your website’s appearance. You can install plugins to extend the core functionality of WordPress. 

Basically, it means you can choose to do whatever you want to do with your website! That’s how powerful this software is. And best of all? It’s 100% free!

Gone are the days when you’d have to learn HTML and CSS just to build a simple website. WordPress allows you to save thousands of dollars in professional web developers’ fees.  

The Two Versions Of WordPress

There are two versions of WordPress: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. 

WordPress.org is the home of the free, open-source software which you must install on your web hosting server (a.k.a. self-hosted WordPress). This is the version of WordPress I will be covering in depth in this course.

WordPress.com works just like a website builder, and the learning curve is practically non-existent. You simply create a WordPress.com account, and voila, you’re ready to write and publish your first post.

You can build a free website, yes, but your domain name will be something like ‘yourname.wordpress.com’. If you want to remove wordpress.com from your domain, then you’ll have to upgrade your membership. 

However, even with your upgraded WordPress.com membership, you still won’t have the level of control and freedom that a self-hosted WordPress website enjoys. 

In summary, WordPress.com works great for beginners who don’t want to get involved with buying a custom domain, paying for web hosting, customizing and managing their website. 

For those who want maximum control over their web properties, a selfhosted WordPress website is the way to go.

The Self-Hosted WordPress Story

In May 2003, WordPress version 1.0 was released to the world. Its founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, developed the platform based on another blogging software called “b2/cafelog”. 

The first release was well received by the blogging community. But it wasn’t until a year later in 2004 when the biggest blogging software at the time, Movable Type, announced a radical change in licensing terms that resulted in mass migration of its users. 

Most of Movable Type’s users ended up using WordPress, a free and open source alternative that offered features found in their mainstream and premium competitors. 

With the influx of new users giving favorable feedback to WordPress, more and more developers joined the platform. And the rest, as they say, is history.

WordPress has received numerous awards to date. It has been named the

‘Best Open Source CMS,’ ‘Best Open Source Software,’ ‘Best CMS for Personal Websites,’ and many other similar awards by different organizations. 

Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little built this software for free, without expecting anything in return. And the world rewarded them for their generosity. 

WordPress has grown from being supported by a few developers to being continuously updated by a global community of developers. 

As of this writing, WordPress powers 30% of all websites on the Internet. That translates to millions upon millions of websites running on this very powerful, free software!