WordPress is an open-source and the most popular content management system. You can use this wonderful CMS free of any charge. The WodPress is written in PHP and linked to a MySQL or MariaDB database. There is a long list of its value-added features which includes a template system and plug-in architecture.
WordPress themes are known as themes. Initially, WordPress was launched as a blog publishing system. Later on, it evolved as a complete content management system supporting a wide range of web content such as forums, mailing lists, membership sites, media galleries, e-commerce sites, online stores and learning management systems (LMS).
By now, WordPress has emerged as the preferred CMS being used by more than 40% of the world’s top 10 million websites. Hence, you may rely on this content management system for any of your needs to showcase your business on the World Wide Web or you wish to spread knowledge and awareness for the general public through informative forums, building a website on WordPress for free may prove to be your first choice.
A veteran American developer Matt Mullenweg and his English fellow, Mike Little released WordPress on 27th May, 2003.
To use this interesting CMS, You need to install WordPress on a web server. You can opt either for WordPress.com for using it online or you may simply install a software package from WordPress.org for using it as a local network host. Thus, you can use a local computer for single-user for testing, training and learning purposes. Also, you can Check out this infographic to see the comparison of different CMS including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
A Brief Overview of WordPress
Indeed, WordPress has emerged as a top end medium that is enabling web developers to create websites according to the needs and requirements of any particular business and users. If you develop an understanding of WordPress features, you would be better placed to make the best use of various functionalities of this magical CMS.
What Are WordPress Themes
A wide range of WordPress themes enables the developers to select the theme of their choice keeping in view the type or nature of the business or service for which the website is being created. The WordPress themes are easy to use. While making good use of these themes, you can change the appearance or look as well as the functionality of the WordPress based website. You are not required to change the back-end coding or actual content of the website.
WordPress Plugins
The WordPress Plugins are the features or tools which allow users to add features or functions to a website created within WordPress CMS. Currently, WordPress.org offers more than 58,000 plugins. These plugins are sets of useful tools which offer unique features to customize the website according to the requirements of the businesses or the users.
Mobile Applications
Many WordPress apps are available for Android, WebOs, iOS and Windows Phone. So, you can use these apps to perform tasks like adding new blog posts or pages to your website, commenting, replying to comments. Moreover, you can view the stats of your blog or website through these WordPress apps developed by Automattic and others.
Accessibility:
Teams of smart developers keep working behind the scene adding value-added services and features to WordPress. So, the WordPress accessibility team continuously imparting its role to improve the accessibility to key WordPress tools and themes.
WordPress Accessibility Coding Standards are governed by the principle that “All new or updated code released in WordPress must conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
About Few Other Useful Features of WordPress
WordPress offers modern and SEO-friendly tools like integrated link management. It is a search engine-friendly permalink structure. It allows the developers to assign categories to posts and help in tagging of posts. WordPress offers automatic filters for standardized formatting and styling of the text.
Similarly, WordPress supports Trackback and Pingback standards. These standards are useful for displaying links to other sites which are linked to an article or post. WordPress allows editing in HTML.
So, you can edit the website or blog post while using the visual editor. You can use other WordPress tools from the range of WordPress plugins for performing specialized editing features.