What’s the wordpress?
The Ultimate Content Management System
WordPress is a content management system, or CMS for short, which means that while you provide all the content that makes up your site (such as images, text, videos, etc.), the platform does all the coding and organizing for you — so you don’t have to be experienced to build a beautiful, functional website.
Open Source, Open Use
Since WordPress is open source, that means you’re free to modify and build upon its software. Thousands of volunteers the world over work to improve the platform every day, and it’s free to use without paying a licensing fee.
Evolution & History
Since its birth in 2003, WordPress has evolved from a simple blogging tool to the most popular content management system on the web, running over a quarter of the world’s websites.
| MAY 2003 | WordPress is launched by college freshmen Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. |
| AUG 2006 | The first WordCamp is held in San Francisco, CA. |
| DEC 2008 | WordPress reaches 500,000+ downloads |
| NOV 2011 | WordCamp grows to 52 events worldwide. |
| DEC 2011 | WordPress.org claims 22% of all new and active domains. |
| DEC 2012 | The WordPress.org community grows to 20,000+ people. |
| JUNE 2014 | 25 million downloads. |
| OCT 2014 | WordPress is published in 120 languages. |
Why Use WordPress?
Flexible
Whether you’re building an online store or a private WordPress blog, this platform provides thousands of themes and plugins to make your site look and function exactly how you’d like.
Easy
Most WordPress themes can be set up and customized with zero coding required. With an incredibly intuitive dashboard, no WordPress developer is necessary for you to make the updates you need.
Quick WordPress Installation
It only takes a few minutes and Bluehost’s one-click install to use WordPress. That way, you can start creating your website as soon as you have the inkling to build it.
Mobile-Friendly
A website that’s not responsive may as well be invisible. With WordPress, most themes are optimized to work well and look good on all types of devices.
Affordable
WordPress is open source, which means its source code is available to you free of charge. You still need a place to store and run the code, but the code itself is free and keeps your costs down.
…and Everything Else
From updating your site on the WordPress mobile app, to assigning specific permission levels to your site’s contributors — WordPress has all your needs covered.
Beautiful Themes
Choosing a theme for your new website can be the most exciting part of the building process. Looking for a design that’s simplistically modern? Check. More colors and images? Check. With thousands of free and premium themes to choose from, you can be certain there’s a theme for that.
Templates are easily modified too. Fonts, colors, headings, images, the content itself — all can be easily changed within the intuitive WordPress dashboard. For more specific needs, you can build custom themes too. From online stores to blooming blogs to stunning portfolios, it’s easy to find the right style solution for your unique website.
Functional Plugins
On top of looking good, WordPress provides you with the ability to expand your site’s overall functionality through plugins.
For example, you may be looking to set up an online store for your business. Or you may need to capture someone’s contact address via a form. A myriad of available plugins can help you add these (and many more) capabilities to your site.
What can plugins do?
Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves
17 posts
are published every
second on WordPress
sites around the world.1
15 million
websites — and counting —
are a part of the WordPress community and use WordPress as their
CMS.1
37 million
global Google searches
for “WordPress” are
made per month.1
22%
of new domains in the us
are run with WordPress.1
27%
of all websites are
run on WordPress.2
409 million
people view WordPress
blogs monthly.2
WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com
What’s the difference? You’re not alone if you’ve ever been confused about this one.
So let’s get straight to it:
The biggest difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com comes down to who is hosting your site.
With WordPress.org, you host the site yourself — meaning you download the WordPress software and install it on your own web server, wherever that may be. With WordPress.com, the hosting is provided for you right on WordPress’s own servers.
There are more differences than simply who is hosting your site of course, so we broke them down for you in this quick guide:
| .COM | .ORG |
|---|---|
| Free Account | WordPress software is still free, but you need to pay for a web host. |
| Hosted with WordPress | Hosted with your web host of choice. |
| Free & Premium Themes Available | Free Themes + Premium Themes + Custom Themes + Build Your Own |
| Limited Functionality | Unlimited Functionality through use of Plugins |
| Limited Customization | Fully Customizable |
| WordPress-Maintained | Self-Maintained |
Our Recommendations
If you’re interested in creating a simple, no-frills blog, WordPress.com is a great solution — but you’ll be limited in your ability to tweak its appearance and functionality.
If you want to take full advantage of all WordPress has to offer — such as a personalized domain name, plugins, custom themes — WordPress.org is clearly the way to go. You simply need to install WordPress on your own hosting server, like the kind you get at www.IHolyTech.com. This gives you free rein to personalize and grow your site exactly how you’d like.