WordPress for Beginners Blog Series Part 1: What is WordPress?

Pt. 1: The Software

Like most people, you’ve probably heard the name thrown around in some sort of association with building websites. But what exactly IS WordPress? It’s important to note that there are two types of WordPress platforms: WordPress.org and WordPress.com. Both are a products of the same CMS – Content Management System.

WordPress, in general, is an Open Source project, meaning that there are people all over the world contributing to its software, continually updating it to the needs of today’s sites. Originally designed for the blogging community, WordPress, as a #1 content management system, now powers 25% of all websites and there’s no sign of slowing down yet! This also means that you can use it without a licensing fee. From there, WordPress breaks into two separate services types you’ll need to consider before starting any website.

Which WordPress?!

WordPress.com is a site service where you are able to host your own site, but there are limitations. When you first set up a WordPress.com account, you are given the option of linking your already purchased domain from another service or you can purchase your own domain name right there at WordPress.com and then run your site off of that. You also have the option of running a completely free site (no purchased domain) and start a basic blog by way of yourname.wordpress.com. However, once you enter the dashboard of that site through WordPress.com, you quickly realize that there is only so much room to grow for your website. Hosting with WordPress.com is free forever, but there are always ways to upgrade.

WordPress.org is a different, more versatile and advanced service in that it takes the software of WordPress and allows you to control the entire existence of your website through self-hosting – hosting it outside of WordPress. If you’re considering running a business online, you’ll quickly see how this is the better suited option for you out of the two.

You still with me? We’re just getting started! To really understand the need for a content management system (particularly utilizing WordPress.org), let’s do a break down of how hosting, the act of putting a website online…actually works.

Hosting

When working with WordPress.com after registering a new domain (your web address such as www.bethanyopp.com) or registering one you already own, you simply go to WordPress.com and start your website building and WordPress.com will host it. The alternative as mentioned before is to self-host.

Hosting is the act of placing your website online. Just like you search through your computer as its own mini network of files, the internet is a giant network connecting millions of computers. In order to have your own location (domain) on the internet – the ability of hosting a website – you need a place to load all your files that make up your site in the first place. This “home base” is called your server.

Those files are filled with code. These codes are internet languages that create your web pages. There are three basic types of code I’ll note:

• HTML: Hypertext Markup Language; used for adding color, language (text), and graphics on a website. HTML is the structure of a website.
  Example: Designing the structure of a web page so that that are two paragraphs instead of one giant paragraph and some header text.
• CSS: Cascading Style Sheet; style of HTML-based language used to essentially define the presentation of a site.
  Example: Formatting page border, spacing, and margin size.

• JavaScript: JavaScript was made to create interactive site behavior.
  Example: A clickable “submit” button.

The bulk of those files together, which make up your website as a whole, is your site database. You database is found on your server. Your server is where your website is hosted.

PHP is an HTML-embedded web language for server-side execution. That’s a really fancy way of saying that PHP is a language that tells your server what to do with your website pages, which is the act of sharing your website as a whole (how it looks normally instead of as a bunch of code) to be viewed in your browser. Your browser is the application you use to view the internet, such as Google, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc.

Working with your server (all that data we just breezed through) is considered back-end management which is utilized during the development process of your website both at startup, design, and ongoing maintenance. It is a tedious but important capability of utilizing WordPress.org because this is where you can completely reset many aspects of your site from 404 error page design to maximum upload sizes and so much more. Working with WordPress.com, you wouldn’t be able to manually do any of this. Which means you’re left at the mercy of WordPress.com, with basic template customization and overall basic site capabilities, not to mention lack of in-depth SEO, which we’ll talk about in the upcoming posts. When self-hosting and installing WordPress onto your server, you have full control over everything that makes your website functions.

Front-end management comes into play after you’ve installed the WordPress application onto your server and are ready to design. This is where you will be dealing with the user (those who are viewing your site) activity. Front-end management is the act of managing the design and content of your website and WordPress is the tool you would use. One of the most common reasons one might want to have a self-hosted website is the use of plugins. We’ll talk more about this later, but a plugin is an application you install into your site to utilize countless abilities, from contact forms to event calendars, online bookings and more.

Long story short, all those files written with code are translated into the normal webpages full of the content we see when we enter a website. WordPress (.com or .org) allows you the ability to organize, post, and communicate that content to the world. How much control you want over that content will decide if you go WordPress.com or WordPress.org.

Class dismissed!

Stay tuned for the next lesson… 
Part 2/1: The Service. How do I use WordPress?

Join me every Monday for the WordPress for Beginners Blog Series where we’ll talk about the basics of WordPress for your business. Remember, this blog series is more geared towards those looking to use WordPress strictly for content management, not designing templates/site layout. So if you’re maintaining the content (images, posting blogs, etc.) for your website, this is for you!