How does WordPress work?
WordPress for a simple website
Chances are, you’ve already heard of WordPress. But what is WordPress? Simply put, WordPress is web software that you can use to create your own website or blog. Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has become one of the most popular web publishing platforms, and today it powers more than 70 million websites. Because it is based on industry standard php and mySQL, the WordPress hosting platform can run on almost any modern server.
But what many people don’t realize, WordPress is not just a blogging tool. It is also a highly flexible content management system CMS that gives you the opportunity to create and manage your own full-featured website using just your web browser. Best of all, it’s completely free. It is constantly improving and evolving. This is because WordPress is an open source project, which means hundreds of volunteers from around the world are constantly creating and improving code for WordPress software. And there are thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes that allow you to create a completely custom website for just about anything you can think of.
How does WordPress work?
Since the early days of the Internet, websites have been built in HTML, a programming language that uses complex instructions called tags to format text, images, page layouts, and more. Your web browser then reads the HTML code by interpreting the tags to render and display the content of a particular page. These days, you can install WordPress on your own web hosting account in a few minutes. And once installed, it allows you to use a simple web-based editor to create web pages without having to learn HTML. There is even a version hosted on WordPress.com, which allows you to create a new WordPress website in just seconds. The downside to this method is that you do not have your own domain name, but you are using a subdomain. Most Internet professionals agree that registering and creating your own domain name and website is more valuable in the long run than spending the same amount of time creating a website using the domain name of another person. That is why it is recommended that you get a shared web hosting account and install WordPress on your hosting account. Many shared hosting accounts include an easy one-click install feature that makes it easy to install WordPress on your own hosting account using your own domain name.
- johnday.WordPress.com
- johnday.com
With your own domain name and your own web hosting account with WordPress installed, you are in control of your own content and your own website.
WordPress is an excellent option for your website or blog:
- It is open source, which also means that it is free for commercial or private use. Hundreds of people working on it, WordPress is constantly improving and evolving.
- It’s easy to use. Instead of having to hire a web designer or contact your webmaster when you want to make a small change to your website, you can easily manage and update your own content without having to learn HTML. If you know how to use the basic formatting tools in Microsoft Word, you can edit your site.
- It is flexible and extensible. There are literally thousands of plugins and themes, both commercial and free, that allow you to easily change the entire look of your website or blog or even add new features like surveys or contact forms with just a few clicks.
- It’s easy to find support. So if you want to add highly custom features, it’s easy to find support or hire someone to help you. The official WordPress forum that is very helpful in finding answers to all your WordPress questions. Other support options include WordPress Stack Exchange or WP Questions that offer answers to your questions. There are thousands of developers who can help you too.
- WordPress is SEO friendly. WordPress is standards compliant and includes everything you need to ensure your content is optimized for search engines, which is critical to the success and visibility of your websites in search engines. In short, WordPress is made to do SEO well.
- Fully compliant with W3C standards
- Integrated support for RSS and Ping-O-Matic
- Clean and search engine friendly code
- You will be in control of your own content. Some other publishing platforms limit what you can or cannot do on your own website. And it’s locked on that service, so if you ever shut down, you could easily lose all of your content. With WordPress you can import your data from other systems like blogger or tumbler. And you can easily export your data to get away from WordPress, if you want to. You are in control of your website and its content.
Design a website with WordPress and a web hosting account:
The following steps describe the process you will go through when setting up a WordPress website on your web hosting account.
- Buy domain name and web hosting
- Install WordPress from cPanel
- Change the configuration and structure of permalinks
- Add essential plugins
- Best WP Security: Protect Your WordPress Website
- WP Super Cache: speed up and improve your site performance
- WordPress SEO by Yoast / All in One SEO Pack – Optimize Your Site Posts and Pages for Search Engines
- Contact Form – Add a simple contact form to a page on your website
- Google XML Sitemap – Create and submit your XML sitemap to Google for better indexing
- Install the theme
- Add content
WordPress and web hosting account
WordPress allows you to focus on your content, unlike countless hours of work on design and workflow, you will most likely enjoy running your site on this CMS. So if you are looking for an easy tool to create your own blog or website without having to learn complicated HTML, no other system makes it that easy. And you’ll find WordPress to be incredibly flexible with thousands of themes, plugins, and support options to ensure your site continues to grow with you in the future. Most web hosts come with WordPress ready to install in just a few clicks and your web host’s support staff is probably very familiar with WordPress to help you.