What is WordPress?

Vladimír Juroško

What is WordPress? WordPress is a free open source content management system – CMS (from English Content Management System). It is based on PHP and MySQL. WordPress is developed under the GNU GPL license (the so-called free software license). It has a broad user and developer community.

WordPress is used by 30% of the top 10 million websites [statistics from April 2018]. In total, it runs over 60 million websites. WordPress was founded on May 27, 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

Table of Contents

What is WordPress – simply put

Simply put, WordPress is the most popular publishing system for websites and blogs.

Official logo

In the picture below, you can find the official WordPress logo:

Advantages of WordPress

It’s free – WordPress itself and many themes and plugins are free of charge.
No programming skills required – the user can manage their website without the knowledge of programming languages such as HTML, CSS and PHP.
Free and frequent updates – WordPress community often releases security updates as well as new features.
Multilingualism – the core of WordPress itself as well as many plugins and themes are translated into most languages, including English. Here’s how to make a multilingual WordPress website.
A number of free themes and modules – WordPress benefits certainly include a number of existing add-ons.
Ease of use – simple administration of creating articles, working with media and creating content.
Wide community of users – there are many forums where community experts will be happy to advise you. You can also take part in official meetings called WordCamp and WordPress meetup.
Variability – with the help of themes and modules, WP can be used for many purposes – personal blog, company presentation, e-commerce, forum and even social network
Support for most hosting – it is still a good idea to check whether the web hosting meets the optimal requirements for running WP. You can view my tutorial on how to choose the best WordPress hosting.
Multisite – the ability to create multiple sites on one domain.