What is WordPress? An In-Depth FAQ

If you have tried to build a website or you work on the internet, its likely you have heard of WordPress.

WordPress powers some of the biggest websites on the web and over 30% of the entire internet.

In this article, we are going to define what WordPress is, how it works and why you should consider using it as your content management system.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free CMS (content management system) that allows you to easily create websites, pages, and blog posts.

This open-source software was created in 2003 and has since become one of the most popular web publishing platforms online. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little initially built the software and now its managed by the WordPress Foundation.

WordPress is 100% free to download and install on a server of your choice.

What Can WordPress Do?

WordPress is not just a blogging platform. Since WP is open source, it’s easily customizable to do whatever you need. You can create anything from WordPress blogs to custom software that performs specific processes.

With WordPress, you can create a fully functioning website and marketing funnel with almost no cost at all. Here are some more things you can do with WordPress:

• Membership Website
• E-Commerce Store
• News Website
• Business Website
• Review Website
• Coupon Site
• Online Course Management
• Affiliate Blog

How does WordPress Work?

WordPress is a PHP script that needs to be hosted in a Linux server with MySQL database connection.

Many popular hosts have WordPress-based hosting packages that make installing WordPress a breeze.

Choosing and changing your website’s ‘theme’ is really easy with WP. With thousands of paid and free themes, you will find a color scheme and layout that matches your needs for no cost.

The WordPress themes directory features thousands of free themes you can install on your WordPress website with ease.

Once you have your design picked out and installed, you can install WordPress Plugins that will extend the functionality of your website.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

If you do not want to customize your WordPress site with code, you can use WordPress Plugins to extend the functionality of your website. For example, with the WooCommerce plugin, you can have an online store set up in minutes, at no cost.

With over 50,000 active WordPress plugins, you can most likely find a plugin that will do what you need your website to do.

Some plugins are free, while some plugins can cost a pretty penny depending on their functionality. Browse the WordPress plugin directory to find the best plugins for your WordPress site.

Why Use WordPress?

WordPress is easily one of the most streamlined CMS software on the market. There are so many reasons that you should use WordPress for your website, but here are some more important reasons:

Its Open Source

As I mentioned at the beginning of this guide, WordPress is open-source which means that it’s free to download, change, improve or customize.

This is also known as GPL or General Public License that allows the software to be freely used, modified and redistributed by anyone. In other words, it means:

• Anyone can download and run the software
• Anyone can modify it
• Anyone can redistribute free copies of the software
• Anyone can distribute modified versions of the software.

Because it’s open-source, you can freely customize the code to fit your needs which can give you the functionality you need for a minimal cost.

Customizability

WordPress is super customizable. You can easily change themes, layouts and the overall look of your website. Not only that, but you can install plugins to extend the functionality of your WordPress website.

Unlike other CMS software, WordPress can be fully customized to fit your needs. Drag and Drop Builder plugins allow you to easily build pages on your website without knowing any code at all.

Great for SEO

When it comes to SEO, WordPress is easily the best CMS for having an optimized website for search engines. Since its so customizable, you can implement all of the latest SEO methodologies and trends.

Get started with one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, Yoast SEO. Check out our detailed guide on optimizing your WordPress website with Yoast SEO.

Plugin Extendability

As we have mentioned before, plugins are one of the most powerful tools that WordPress has. With WordPress plugins, you can add almost any type of functionality, from appointment schedulers to membership functionality.

It’s important to note that WordPress can get slow the more plugins you install so try and keep them to a minimum. Once you reach 40+ plugins, you will start seeing some lagging so keep your plugin count under this.

It’s Fast & Small

The core WordPress installation itself it’s only 30.8 MB which is super small! Not only that but it doesn’t take much server resources to run the open-source software.

It also only needs a max memory limit if 128MB but 256MB is recommended. Most WordPress hosting companies will have more ample resources to run your WordPress website.

The bigger your WordPress website gets though, the more server resources you will need to allocate to it.

Being so small, WordPress will create a blazing fast website experience which is super important for SEO and conversion rate.

Large Support Forum

Although WordPress doesn’t have any 24/7 support,  there are larges forums dedicated to providing support to WordPress users.

These forums will answer questions about installing WordPress, basic usage, customization, maintenance and more.

Since WordPress is so large, it’s very likely that if you are having an issue, someone has already had that issue and has a solution for it. This is another reason that makes WordPress such a great content management system.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, WordPress is one of the most advanced and feature-rich open-source software available today. As it powers over 30% of the internet, it proves that it can run the biggest sites online and even the small mom and pop sites.

If you are looking for an affordable solution to create a website, then WordPress is a great choice.

Tyler Horvath

Tyler Horvath is an SEO Expert with over 15 years of experience in search engine optimization, popular blog author and WordPress SEO expert.