What is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing content on the web. The software is free to download from wordpress.org. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), which means its source code is open for anyone to study, modify and redistribute, including for commercial use. WordPress's own About page describes it as running on PHP and MariaDB (MySQL is also supported).

Note that the software is free, but running a website still costs money for hosting and a domain name, and often for premium themes, plugins or professional help.

WordPress.org and WordPress.com

The name is used for two different things:

• WordPress.org is where you download the open-source software to run on your own hosting (often called self-hosted WordPress). You manage hosting, updates, backups and security, or pay someone to.
• WordPress.com is a hosted service that runs WordPress for you, with hosting included. What you can customise depends on the plan you choose: WordPress.com's support documentation says installing plugins is available on its paid plans, so check the current plan details before you assume what a free or lower plan allows.

On either option you own your content and are free to move it, as WordPress.com's own comparison states.

What WordPress is made of

It helps to separate three parts:

• Core. The WordPress core is the software itself: PHP files that handle content management, users, the admin dashboard, the editor and the rest of the system. Core is not "made of plugins".
• Themes. A theme controls the design of your site: colours, fonts and layout. In the words of the WordPress developer handbook, themes control the presentation of content.
• Plugins. The developer documentation defines plugins as packages of code that extend the core functionality of WordPress. Plugins add optional features such as contact forms, SEO tools or online stores, and they control the behaviour and features of your site.

You do not need to know PHP to use WordPress. You add and edit content in your browser using the block editor, which offers blocks for paragraphs, images, headings, lists, videos and more. More blocks can come from plugins. Knowing code becomes useful when you want custom themes or features.

Why consider WordPress for your website?

WordPress is free software with a very large community, extensive official documentation, and a large ecosystem of themes and plugins from many developers. There are support forums, and there is a wide pool of agencies and freelancers who work with it. That choice also means you have to pick carefully: use maintained plugins and themes from sources you trust, and keep everything updated.

How does WordPress work?

WordPress needs a web server with PHP and a MySQL or MariaDB database. The pieces fit together like this:

• A database stores your content (posts, pages, comments, users and settings) in a structured way. During installation WordPress itself creates its database tables, so you do not need a separate plugin for that. You only need to supply an empty database and a database user.
• PHP files (core, your theme and your plugins) read from the database and build each page when a visitor asks for it.
• Web pages are generated from those files and from the posts and pages you publish.

How to install WordPress

Uploading the WordPress files to a server is not enough on its own: it must be connected to a database first. The manual installation described in the WordPress developer documentation goes like this:

1. Download and unzip WordPress from wordpress.org.
2. Create a database and a database user with the privileges WordPress needs, using your host's control panel or a tool such as phpMyAdmin.
3. Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and enter your database name, user, password and host, along with the authentication keys and salts. (Some installers can create this file for you.)
4. Upload the files to your web server.
5. Open the site's wp-admin/install.php address in your browser and enter your site title, an administrator username, a strong password and your email address.

Most modern hosting companies also offer a one-click WordPress installer in their control panel, which does these steps for you. Then you can install a theme, customise it and start publishing pages and content. Whichever method you use, keep WordPress, your theme and your plugins updated and make regular backups.

If you need a tailored website, please feel free to contact us. We can help with a custom website build using WordPress for your business.