Introduction To WordPress

WordPress is a free, open-source software that was originally intended to be used for blogging.

Since it’s inception WordPress has evolved to become a multi purpose, personal publishing system for creating easy to use websites, or in other words…

WordPress is the complete Content Management System for the technological illiterate.

With most Web hosts offering self installation scripts such as Fantastico or Simple Scripts, Setting up a WordPress site can literally be as simple as a couple of mouse clicks, and some administration details, user-name and password for example.

Once you have filled in your admin details and follow the prompts, the installation script will automatically set up your MYSQL database for you.

Note:Your WordPress website needs a MYSQL database for it to work.

The WordPress software is built using PHP, CSS and (X)HTML code, and although you do not need to know any of these coding languages to use WordPress, a basic understanding and knowledge will pay huge dividends when customizing your WordPress website.

The beauty about WordPress is, adding content to your site can be as easy as typing in some text and hitting the publish button. Basically if you can send an email you can publish your own content on your own website.

WordPress also has an ever growing community of users and programmers, making the software more and more flexible and powerful each and every day.

WordPress also allows you to easily change the look of your site by using Themes, basically you can change your website layout with a single click of your mouse.

WordPress also uses Plugins, you could easily describe a plugin as a specific piece of software that adds an additional function to your site by “Plugging into it“.

Plugins and themes are usually free and can be downloaded from the main WordPress site.

WordPress also builds itself. Every time you add a new post or page, all of your links are automatically generated, meaning all you have to worry about is adding good quality content to your site.

You add content by using posts and pages. Posts are usually placed into specific categories and sub categories where your pages can be arranged in hierarchies, for example you could have an “About” page that has several pages “About You” under it. There are no limits to how many pages you can have under your Parent page.

In a nutshell, WordPress is very easy to install, use and customise.