What the heck is WordPress?

If you’re thinking about getting a new website and you keep hearing about WordPress websites, and aren’t even sure what the heck a WordPress site is, then you’re in the right place. WordPress started out as an open source (read free) blogging platform. It’s also a Content Management System, or CMS.

A CMS is basically a software program that allows you to manage the various pages on your site. Before CMS’s if you wanted to update your site you had to edit the individual HTML pages in your FTP server.

Long story short, WordPress is a free powerful way to manage the content of your website.

Isn’t WordPress just for Blogs?

Yes, it’s true that WordPress started out as a blogging platform, BUT nowadays a ton of major websites use WordPress for regular non blog type website.

How much does WordPress cost?

That’s the great part. Since WordPress is open source, it’s totally free. You don’t have to pay anything to set up or maintain the software. But since it’s one of the most popular open source platforms there are constant updates and upgrades done to WordPress that don’t cost a dime.

Can I have my own domain name, or does it have to have a wordpress.com ending?

Absolutely! There’s big difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. If you use WordPress.com then you are hosting your site with them and your site will have a wordpress.com ending. If however you host your own website, you can have any domain name you want.

Don’t all wordpress look the same?

They certainly can, but they don’t have to. At the end of the day most sites these days have a header section, and navigation section, a main content area a sidebar and a footer. How you style all of those elements can make the difference between a generic looking WordPress site, and an original stylish CMS website.

But I want a real website.

A lot of people don’t realize that a WordPress site is just a series of HTML pages, styled with CSS. That’s exactly what almost all websites are made up of. The only thing that makes WordPress different from a site you would build with Dreamweaver is that it uses PHP ( a programming language) to dynamically manage the pages of the website

But I want my site to be original and not just be a template

Here’s a dirty little secret most website designers don’t want you to know about. Even the highest website designers in the world, the ones who charge over $50,000 a site, still use templates. They might not call them templates, but what they do is copy and paste large chunks of code they use as a framework for all of their sites, and then just add some styling to make it look original. You can do the exact same thing with WordPress themes, but for a fraction of the cost.

Hope this article clears up some misconceptions about Worpdress. To get started with your own WordPress website, feel free to contact us today.