Introducing WordPress

How do I make a website? is a question that a lot of people ask in this day and age. Actually, it's probably one of the main questions you ask if you're a business owner in the 21st century. But website making is not only about business.

These days, dare I say, everybody should at least consider getting a website of their own. In the past, this was an intimidating concept. The only way you could get a website was to either hire a professional who would build one for you, or learn web technologies and development yourself and then build one on your own. Nowadays, there are more options, and particularly if you want to build a website really quickly while making sure that it is top quality at the same time.

The best option of them all is WordPress—which is the topic of this book. Under the hood, WordPress is an open source web software application that you can use to create and maintain a modern website. At the time of writing, more than 30% of all websites run on WordPress, and the number is only expected to increase in the coming years. In simple terms, with WordPress, anyone can build a beautiful website with minimal effort involved and then make it available to the world in no time. Let's take a look at some of the perks of using WordPress:

• You don't need to hire a team of developers and/or designers
• You don't need to learn advanced PHP
• You don't need to be a pro with computers
• Nevertheless, you can still end up with a high-quality website with almost unlimited extension possibilities

These days, everyone has a good reason to have a website. It's not just large companies anymore. Individuals, families, freelancers, or small/independent businesses can all benefit from a website. However, at the same time, most people don't have the financial resources to hire a web development company or a freelance web developer to create a website for them. This is where WordPress comes into play. WordPress is free, easy to use, and packed with excellent features. Since WordPress is a web application, it does not need to be installed on your home PC or Mac, or any other machine under your control. It can live on a server (kind of a computer) that belongs to a website-hosting company. Originally, WordPress was an application meant to run a blog website. However, it has evolved into a fully featured content management system (CMS). If you don't know what a blog is, don't worry, we explain everything later in this chapter.

In this book, we'll be going through each important step on your way to understanding how WordPress works and what can be done with it. We'll learn about the basic usage of WordPress, configuration, extending your site with themes and plugins, and much more. But before we can get to all that, we need to start at square one! In this chapter, we'll explore:

• The reasons that will make you choose WordPress to run your website
• The greatest advantages of WordPress
• Online resources for WordPress
• Some of the most useful features in the newest versions of WordPress