Welcome to the first article on learning WordPress. Before we learn more about WordPress, it helps us to know what is WordPress?
In this article, we will review in depth what is meant by WordPress, what is its history, and other points related to WordPress. Read more right now through the following review.
WordPress is often referred to as a CMS (Content Management System). With the WordPress CMS, website developers no longer have to bother with technical issues, such as front-end and back-end settings.
Because WordPress the activities of editing, publishing, and managing users on websites made with WordPress can be easily done and only take a few minutes.
Main Functions and History of the WordPress CMS
It has been explained above that WordPress functions to create various kinds of websites (web-based applications). Then how the early history of WordPress? WordPress was first developed by Matt Mullenweg.
Matt himself is very fond of writing on his personal blog. He created his first blog using the (now defunct) bbpress.org platform. From there he had the idea to develop his own blogging platform.
From a strong desire to create a clean and well-structured blogging platform. Finally, Matt in 2003 invited his friend Mike Little to develop WordPress.
WordPress itself was first released on May 27, 2003, and began to experience increasing popularity in January 2004.
WordPress Popularity
Although there are many other CMS that can be used to create WordPress, WordPress is the most popular. According to the official website, wordpress.org,
WordPress itself is already used by more than 30% of online websites around the world in 2022. In fact, many sites from large and well-known companies in the world use WordPress.
Some of the Advantages of WordPress
WordPress can be as popular as it is now because it has several advantages as below:
1. Easy to customize
If you don’t have programming skills to create a website. Don’t be discouraged because WordPress is the solution. By using WordPress in one day we can create a website. Because of its superior features, namely, just drag and drop.
2. Search Friendly
So if our website has a lot of visitors from search engines (for example, Google) then our website must be optimized for SEO (SEO is not discussed here). And WordPress is very easy for SEO optimization.
3. Responsive Mobile
With WordPress, we can create a website that is mobile, and responsive, aka a friendly display when opened on a mobile device such as a smartphone.
4. Thousands of Themes and Plugins
Designing a website can be done easily, one of which is because Worpdress has thousands of free and paid themes/templates and consists of various categories. Apart from that, to add features to our website, we can use plugins, for example, we want the WhatsApp chat feature on the web, so all we have to do is install the WhatsApp chat plugin.
5. High Performance
Websites that we create using WordPress will have very good performance. Provided we make it using themes and plugins that have a good rating.
6. Security
Is WordPress security good enough? Yes, websites made with WordPress have high-security quality.
7. Community
To share experiences or discuss creating and developing websites using WordPress, we can join the WordPress community. One of them is the Indonesian WordPress community on Facebook, every day there are sharing, questions and answers, promos, and other information.
Types of Websites That Can be Made with WordPress
Even though WordPress is generally used to create blog websites, WordPress can also be used to create various other types of websites, namely:
- Web Blogs
- News Websites
- Forums website
- Buying and selling websites / online shops
- Gallery Website
- Agency Website
- School Website
- and many others
In fact, many large companies use WordPress with the site link below:
- https://www.newyork.com/
- https://www.sonymusic.com/
- https://www.beyonce.com/
How to Make a Website with WordPress
When you want to create a website or site with WordPress, you will be faced with two choices, namely:
1. Using WordPress.com
The first way is to use WordPress for free using the wordpress.com online platform. Because it’s free, of course, it will be limited. One of them is the site link that you create will have a wordpress.com subdomain.
An example is guntoro.wordpress.com.
2. Using WordPress.org
The second way is to create a website with WordPress using self-hosting or another name, namely self-hosted. Where after we buy our own hosting and domain we can immediately install WordPress on the server.
Or we can also create a WordPress website offline.
Later, after the web has been made offline, all we have to do is upload it to the Cpanel or server from the hosting domain that was purchased before.
It is on the wordpress.org site that we download the WordPress files as well as various themes and plugins which we will later customize to create the website we want.
Which is Better WordPress VS Blogger (Blogspot.com)?
Which is better Blogger vs WordPress?
Blogger.com is one of the rivals of WordPress. Blogger is currently under the auspices of Google. Just like wordpress.com and wordpress.org. We can also build websites for free and self-hosted.
Of course, blogger and WordPress have their respective advantages. For website addresses created using blogger for free, for example, gleedthemes.blogspot.com.