WordPress is the most popular and frequently used website builder/CMS on the internet. You may be familiar with WordPress already or someone might have recommended it to you.
You are reading the right article to gain more knowledge on the renowned CMS!
In this article we will explore what is WordPress, the difference between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com, why should you choose WordPress for your site, it’s components and for what purposes can it be used. Let’s dive in!
WordPress
As we went over in the introduction, WordPress is the go to choice of development experts and a very popular website builder.
According to W3Techs as of 2023 an astonishing 43.1% of the internet is built up on WordPress!
WordPress does not require you to have any prior knowledge of websites, although, ofcourse having some prior experience or knowledge does give it’s user an edge.
WordPress uses a combination of theme and plugins to build, create and add functionality.
You also do not need to be a coder to work on WordPress, although again, it does give the user an edge but there is a tool/plugin available to do almost everything in WordPress.
WordPress.org VS WordPress.com
You might have heard a lot about WordPress and might have confused WordPress.com with WordPress.org.
For your reference our entire blog is based up on WordPress.org, which is separate from WordPress.com. WordPress.org is an open source CMS that is self hosted by it’s user, whereas WordPress.com is a different service for websites and blog hosting.
A lot of beginners confuse them due to similar names, however, if you came to this site you are probably looking for self hosted WordPress that is WordPress.org, with millions of users, thousands of themes and plugins available under free and premium licenses.
We at HelpWP use WordPress.org ourselves!
Is WordPress secure?
Most frequently asked question and concern people often consult with us for is, Is WordPress secure to use?
The answer is, yes it is absolutely secure!
You may have heard from a few that WordPress has it’s vulnerabilities, but then which CMS does not?
That does not in any way mean WordPress is insecure. In fact, to explain this shortly let’s view a few statistics and reports by Sucuri one of the largest security solution provider with millions of users.
As of 2022, Sucuri reported that out of all WordPress sites hacked, 49.8% were out of date. Similarly according to their report:
36% of all compromised websites had at least 1 vulnerable plugin or theme present in the environment at the point of remediation.
Sucuri Report 2022
These are not all the statistics, you can download their report here for details: 2022 Website Threat Research Report
You can also read our detailed article on WordPress security here: Coming Soon
To summarize what the statistics show WordPress is perfectly secure, however, ofcourse there are vulnerabilities just like in every other CMS BUT these are in overwhelming majority caused by outdated WordPress versions, Plugins, Themes, unsecure passwords/credentials and lack of security implementation by developers.
You can very simply avoid this by regularly updating your WordPress versions, Plugins, Themes, using secure passwords/credentials and using CDN or other security plugins to keep your website safe and secure.
WordPress regularly releases updates with security patches, making sure it is safe from any vulnerabilities. You can use WordPress Automatic Update feature to update WordPress Cores, Plugins and Themes.
WordPress Automatic Updates feature is further explained in our article here: Coming Soon
Can WordPress be learned for free?
One of the most frequently asked questions is, can WordPress be learned free? The simplest answer to that is YES you can if you simply have a laptop/computer and a Wi-fi.
A lot of beginners when search WordPress get worried about expenses like “Web Hosting” and “Domain Name”. While taking a site live does require you to have a Web Hosting and Domain, you do not need them if you are just looking to explore and learn WordPress.
Before you take your actual site live and spend money on Web Hosting and Domain you should ideally learn WordPress by simply installing it to your laptop/computer locally if you are a beginner.
You can use XAMPP which is a free and open source web server solution. Another a rather easier option for local WordPress is Local by FlyWheel. Other similar tools exist as well. Since this article is only focused on WordPress, we will not discuss XAMPP or Local by FlyWheel features and functions in detail here.
You can watch our tutorial to install and configure WordPress on your laptop/computer for free! (Coming Soon).
The key takeaway here is that you can install WordPress and it’s database locally without incurring a single penny as cost!
What kind of sites can be made on WordPress?
One of the most asked questions from us is about limitations of WordPress and what kind of sites can be published using WordPress.
The easiest answer to that is, WordPress has no limits! The only limits that exists is your imagination!
You can literally mould WordPress into anything you want. Our experts have made sites in their careers that include Ecommerce, LMS, Forums, Blogs, Charities, Authors, Portals, ERPs, Hotel/Rent/Buy/Sell, Marketplaces, Events, Point of Sale systems and many more!
So if anyone has told you that WordPress has limits, it does not! Most of the things can even be done free, however, yes some themes and plugins are paid but the cost would still be low compared to developing a fully coded sites and then managing them.
Why WordPress?
As we discussed in start of this article, 43.1% sites globally are powered by WordPress and there is a huge reason why people prefer it!
The very first reason that people choose WordPress for is it’s ease of use. WordPress can be very easily used and freely customized by users without any need of coding knowledge or a developer.
WordPress has a wide range of free and premium themes and plugins that can be used to easily extend functionality of the site. For example, Woocommerce a very powerful WordPress plugin that allows you to add Ecommerce functionality to any WordPress site in a single click, FREE OF COST!
The best part about WordPress in our opinion is that it can grow with you! It works with small businesses and massive enterprise alike, it is so scalable that you can make a small blog or a huge Ecommerce Store, WordPress will support both.
Some of the readers here must have heard that WordPress is very SEO friendly, and it couldn’t be more true! It is very SEO friendly, and tools like Yoast SEO make it even easier to make your site SEO optimized almost instantly!
A very huge advantage of using WordPress is also that it’s documentation and tutorials are very widely available on internet as it has a huge community. Not only does the community produce unlimited articles, tutorials etc. for WordPress but it is also regularly maintained by the community. As it is an open source software the global community collaborates to make keep WordPress secure and regularly updated.
Personally we trust WordPress because of it being Open Source, regularly maintained and very secure. We can mould WordPress into literally anything we want!
Themes & Plugins
Themes and plugins in WordPress are tools that extend functionality of WordPress and help you create a website and it’s functions according to your desire.
Theme in WordPress is in simple words a set of templates and stylesheets coded in PHP (The language in which WordPress is coded) which extends and modifies how the site looks along with it’s functionality without any changes in WordPress Core Files.
You can try different themes for different purposes.
Plugins are perhaps the most vital part of the site. Plugins play the major role in development of WordPress sites by adding/extending functionality.
For example, if you need Google Analytics, Adsense and Search Console integrated in your WordPress website, you can simply install Google Site Kit Plugin to do it all instead of writing elaborate codes and connecting APIs.
Does sound like magic right!? That is because it is, WordPress makes lives easy for it’s users.
This was just a very simple example where a task that would require coding knowledge and a lot of time can simply be done within 10 minutes with a plugin that is FREE!
If this article has made up your mind about you using WordPress for your next site, and you want to learn about requirements, Web Hosting & Domains you are recommended to read our article: WordPress for Beginners: Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Your Website, Domain & Hosting
