WordPress is the top content management tool for online publishing. In the simplest words—WordPress is a free, no-code way to build a website. You can create websites for any use—blogging website, online store, service website, portfolio website, or for other purposes.
Among 1.3 billion websites on the internet, 455 million of them are built using WordPress. WordPress is booming at a high pace, and its share in online CMS taking up the major portion. The stats below show its market share in CMS:
So, what makes WordPress so popular among web creators? Why do people choose it over other platforms? What is WordPress? How to get started with it? And, what is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
We will discuss all these topics as a general introduction to WordPress in this article. Understanding WordPress basics will prove to be very useful in your blogging career.
So, let’s begin.
Understanding WordPress
Technically, we know that WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS). You can create, write, publish and promote your content such as articles, videos, images, designs, pages, etc.
But, this is something everyone tells!
As a beginner you might fail to grab this technical definition. So, let me help you with a perfect analogy.
If you remember the analogy for hosting from the earlier post, where we assumed your house as your website, land as hosting and your domain name as your address; adding to this analogy, WordPress is like a construction company.
- It provides you with an environment in which you can build your website.
- It provides you with all tools and material that you need to create your website
- It allows you to add a team (WordPress users) to help you build your website.
- More tools can be purchased and added to it.
In other words, when you have the land (hosting), you can get this free construction company (WordPress), and build your own house with all the free or paid resources.
As an admin of WordPress, you are the owner of that construction company. You are the leader and therefore you can decide which free tool you want to use, which member should be added to it and for what role, which material to be used, etc.
I hope that helps you get a clear picture of WordPress, its purpose, and its objective. Also, it fits so perfectly in the previous analogy that we have made for hosting (land) and domain name (address)
WordPress.com Vs WordPress.org
WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two different platforms for website building. This section is dedicated to understanding the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
In this course, I will guide you to build your blogging website using WordPress.org. I will share the reason why we choose WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com.
WordPress.org
It is an open-source free platform. This means anyone can contribute to WordPress.org by building and improving it and using it without paying any charges. You just need your own hosting to host your site build using WordPress.org.
It’s an organizational version of WordPress, that is why it has .org in the end.
You get thousands of free and paid plugins, themes, and other marketing tools to grow your blog or website.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com provides you with a low-controlled website, with managed hosting. It has a free version but with a lot of restricted possibilities and contains a brand name in the domain.
It’s the commercial version of WordPress, that’s why it has .com in the end.
The pricing plan is shown below:
What Can You Do Using WordPress.org?
WordPress is a way to create a website without having to know any coding skills. You can create different nature websites such as:
- Blogging website
- Online store website
- Forum website
- Photography or video-sharing website
- Social media like website
- Business website
- Portfolio website
Why WordPress.org is Best Choice?
Apart from WordPress, there are other platforms that allow you to create a website without any requirements of coding skills. But, for several reasons, WordPress.org is the best.
Blogger Vs WordPress:
Blogger is much simple whereas WordPress is full fledge platform to create and customize each and every aspect of your website. Its easy and quick to create a Blogger website but generating traffic is more difficult than on a WordPress website.
Wix Vs WordPress:
The free version of the Wix doesn’t allow you to own a custom domain name. The premium plan of Wix is costlier than WordPress. Wix has customization limitations over WordPress. However, Wix has managed to host while WordPress needs to be self-hosted.
Key Takeaways
Among all the different ways to create a blogging website, we discovered that WordPress.org is the best way, the majority of the websites use it.
It has amazing customization possibilities, free-to-use, self-managed hosting, and high-earning possibilities.
So many successful bloggers and website creators rely on WordPress.org.
Therefore, we will be creating your blogging website in this blogging course using WordPress.org.
