All About WordPress

Originally designed for blogging, WordPress is a popular and powerful open source software that many online businesses and bloggers use for their websites. It is basically a content management system and that's what it does, manage your site's content. It is written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. The software is easy to use, is filled with features, is expandable with new modules that are created and it is free to install and use.

WordPress is actually the successor of b2\cafelog, which was developed by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer for the platform. WordPress came about due to the efforts of Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2\cafelog in 2003. A friend of Matt Mullenweg, Christine Selleck, was the person who suggested the name.

When Six Apart changed the licensing terms of Movable Type in 2004, many of its users moved over to the WordPress platform. This marked a growth in WordPress's popularity that still continues. In 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award for the Best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System.

The software is continually updated with new version and most of them are code named after well-known jazz musicians. For instance version 1.2 was named after American jazz bassist, composer, bandleader, and pianist, Charles Mingus Jr. This version was the first to support Plugins. It contained the same Plugin identification headers being used in the latest versions and is still unchanged.

Some other notable versions named after jazz musicians are 2.0 called Duke after Duke Ellington. This version offered improvements to plugin developers, added image uploading, faster posting, rich editing, better administration tools, and an improved import system. It also completely overhauled the back end. Version 2.1, which corrected security issues, improved content management options, featured a redesigned interface and enhanced editing tools, was named after jazz vocalist, Ella Fitzgerald. On June 10^th 2009, version 2.8 code named Baker, name for jazz trumpeter, flugelhorn player and singer, Chet Baker was released. This version offered faster speed, easier to install themes with one click, a redesigned widget interface and it introduced the CodePress editor for syntax highlighting.

One reason WordPress is so popular is the benefits it offers. It is open source so users can add the functionality they need. This means whatever you need you website to do you can add it to the code. There is also great support through developer and user communities as well as the WordPress team itself. It's written in PHP, which is the most popular programming language around. There are hundreds of plugins for this software and more being created all the time so finding something to suit your needs shouldn't be a problem.

The fast installation is a benefit anyone can appreciate no matter what your skill set is. It only takes about five minutes to install the software. The software comes with a large selection design themes, but there is also hundreds of free user created and third party themes out there that you can use. So if you plan to make a number of sites you won't have to worry about using the same theme for some sites and it would be hard to find another site using a theme that you have used since you can customize your themes.

There are many uses for WordPress. The most notable of these is blogging after all it was originally for blogging and thousands of bloggers use it just for that. However, the software can be used to create other types of sites such as a portfolio for your artwork or photography. There are plugins you can use to make directory websites like a business directory where members can submit information about their business, or an article directory where members can post articles on certain subjects.

You can use it to create niche job boards, say one for people looking for widget programming work or e-book writing. You can use WordPress to make your own personal contact manager to keep an information list of your friends and business contacts. You can make review sites, a wiki, an e-commerce store, add caption to photos on your blog or website, publish an online magazine and a lot more. These are just a few of the uses for this software, it seems you are only limited by your imagination.