WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that allows website owners and creators to produce, publish, and manage a website’s content.
One great advantage of WordPress CMS is that almost no coding skills are necessary to establish a website (unless, of course, you would like to make customs changes to your site.)
Are there any differences between wordpress.org and wordpress.com? Yes, there are a great number of differences between the two platforms.
Very briefly, a great majority of the themes and plugins are available on the wordpress.org platform. WordPress.com platform provides only a small portion of the theme and plugin selection.
What Can I Do with WordPress?
Let’s say that you already have purchased your domain name and hosting service where your website will be “residing.” The next step is to decide what kind of format your website will be: (for example, advertisement, blog, forum, e-commerce, and so on). Buying the domain name and the hosting plan are similar for almost all websites.
The design and the functionalities of the websites make all the difference. At this point, we would like to suggest that you buy your hosting plan since the free hosting services put a limit on the website management capabilities. For example, you may not be able to install plugins to customize your website according to the needs of your business.)
The most notable advantage of using the WordPress CMS is that it removes the need for technical and coding knowledge for almost all website developers. Your website can be up and running within a few minutes with just a few clicks and plugin uploads. For this simple reason, millions of websites already use the WordPress CMS, and thousands are being launched every month.
Before WordPress (and other CMS’s), website building required technical and coding knowledge, which prevented many businesses from establishing their web presence or, at least, presented many challenges to creating an effective website development. Then came WordPress, which has changed the way websites are built.
Instead of paying other people to build websites and relying on their expertise, individuals and businesses have gained an easy means to establish their websites according to their business models and needs.
What is a Theme? What do They Do?
To simplify the process of designing websites, the idea of pre-designed and customizable website designs has emerged. Themes are coded by their authors and are available for use either free or at a fee.
The main idea behind using a theme is to streamline designing the look and functionality of a website. In most cases, theme installations and customizations require no knowledge of coding. One can upload plugins, change the way the website looks, and so on with just a few clicks.
To upload a theme, the WordPress admin panel is used. The authors of the theme give the users the ability to make changes to the theme through the management panel. In today’s theme market, most of the themes have a management panel that can change the theme with a few simple clicks.
Thus, a pre-coded theme, which is identical when first installed, will look different for almost all users after being customized by the website’s administrator. Please note that the management panel might look different for different themes. It is not standard for all themes and depends solely on the theme authors’ choices.
What are WordPress Plugins?
Let’s think of WordPress as a table that we can use to have a meal. Since one can not put the food directly on the table (unless you choose to), we will need plates, silverware, glasses, napkins, etc., to better enjoy our food.
Those additional items can be considered plugins that extend the capabilities of the table (WordPress CMS) and enable us to add (or remove) functionalities of the basic content management system.
Like WordPress, plugins do not require any coding or technical knowledge, either. You can install and customize plugins with a few clicks, as well. Plugins are additional pre-coded software that can be used to add functions to your WordPress website.
There are thousands of plugins available for download on the wordpress.org platform. Most of those available plugins are free, but some do have paid (premium) versions with more functionalities.
Moreover, you can find different plugins on the internet (mostly premium versions) that might serve your business needs. Important Note: Please be careful when choosing a plugin in terms of support, response time, and author reputation before you purchase.
In conclusion, the WordPress platform gives you the ability to create and publish your website with just a few clicks. You can customize your website by installing themes and plugins according to your design and business needs.