A lot of bloggers made the move to WordPress in the last few years, so I decided to write this article to explain to the beginner users what is WordPress really and help those of you wondering if they should give it a try. WordPress is a free web-based CMS(one of the most popular ones along with Drupal and Joomla), giving everyone the opportunity to build and maintain web applications ranging from regular blogs to forums and social networks. It is an open-source project with enormous community founded in 2003. The best feature of WordPress, is its extensibility through themes, plugins and widgets which the WordPress directory is full of. The whole system uses very user-friendly interface, so even beginner users will be able to create great looking content in just a few clicks in their browser.
WordPress is build on top of PHP and MySQL, so it is compatible with almost(if not all) every hosting provider nowadays. And best of all the installation process is as simple as installing a regular program on your PC/Mac.
The reasons why you should use WordPress:
- User Friendly
- Great amount of free themes – You can check our Top five free WordPress themes for february
- Great amount of free plugins and widgets
- Awesome SEO plugins – featuring Yoast, All In One SEO pack etc.
- Enormous community, which you can always ask for help. You might get trolled but don`t lose hope 🙂
Some useful links to get you started:
WordPress.com – free (yes free) online platform where you can register and start using your WordPress blog right away.
WordPress.org – The home of all wordpresses. If you`re using a self-hosted version of WordPress this is the first place you should go to. There you can manually go through the free and paid plugins and themes, check out their features, FAQs, check out the support forums. Basically the whole community lives there, so if you have any questions or troubles you will most probably find the answer there.