WordPress is a free, versatile, and accessible content management system that allows small and large businesses to develop websites. WordPress is one of the best content management systems in the world due to its numerous customization options. Currently, something equivalent to 30% of all sites in the world uses the WordPress management system (WordPress official website address). This full-scale CMS software is often used to design powerful websites. WordPress is very easy to use and has plugins available for almost any scenario.
According to BuiltWith’s site survey report, WordPress is the leading CMS and powers more than one-third of websites and blogs on the web. Also, by obtaining the GNU GPL license at the beginning of this system, WordPress is now free and open source, and the contributions of developers worldwide help develop open source projects.
What is a content management system (CMS)?
A content management system manages the creation and modification of digital content, often abbreviated as CMS. This system is software that helps users to create a website without having to write all the codes from scratch and specialized technical knowledge and create content, manage and modify it.
Instead of spending a lot of money to build your system, create web pages, store images, and other functions, a content management system handles all the basic infrastructure so you can focus on the parts of your online business like SEO. These systems usually support several types of users in a common environment to manage documents with different levels of access and partitioning.
History of WordPress
WordPress was started in 2003 by Mike Little and Matt Mullenough. This content management system focused on blogging in its early days, but newer versions have added more features. Also, the creation of an extensive plugin library led to significant improvements in this platform in 2004 and was a turning point for the transition of WordPress from a blogging platform to today’s content management systems.
WordPress can easily build complex websites, stores, or even social networks. As of version 5, WordPress includes a block-based editor as standard, providing a modern interface for writing simple articles and building complex, structured pages.
What is a WordPress theme?
A WordPress theme includes everything you would normally associate with web design. From color selection to headers, footers and the location of various boxes and effects can be selected and even changed through the WordPress theme. Also, everything related to typography can be controlled through the template, including font type, margins and indentation, and line spacing.
Many WordPress themes are free and can be downloaded and installed from the WordPress repository. Of course, these templates do not have very advanced settings and offer almost the same appearance. Still, in multi-purpose and advanced WordPress templates, customization is beyond imagination, and hundreds of different sites can be designed through them. Professional developers and programmers provide templates such as Enfold or WoodMart and dozens of other templates in this field, which help to design a website quickly and without coding.
Also, store templates have simplified the design of a store in WordPress and it is possible to create an online business easily through them.
What is a WordPress plugin?
A plugin is a small software that includes a set of WordPress functions, and this software can be added to a WordPress website and expand its functions or add new features.
WordPress plugins are written in PHP programming language and integrated with WordPress. There is a common saying in the WordPress community for plugins if you need anything: “There’s a plugin for that”. Plugins allow users to easily add features to their website with a few simple clicks without knowing a single line of code.
Thousands of WordPress plugins are available for free in the official directory of WordPress plugins, both in the introduction and download section and on many websites that teach how to work with them.
Apart from free plugins, there are also great commercial types from third-party companies and developers that meet all users’ needs. For example, with the help of the WooCommerce plugin, you can turn your WordPress website into an all-in-one online store. !
WordPress and SEO
SEO in English stands for Search Engine Optimization and means site optimization for search engines. Site SEO or site optimization for search engines is a process to improve a site or a page of a website in the results of search engines such as Google form. It is natural, and sites that rank higher in search engines and have the most repetitions on the top pages of search results will get more traffic.
WordPress is designed so that it is popular with search engines. Still, we should never forget that paying attention to SEO or website optimization for search engines is very important if you want your site to be well optimized for search engines. It would help if you used standard WordPress templates, and with the help of plugins like Yoast Seo, you can improve this issue even more on your WordPress site.
Advantages of WordPress
One of the advantages of using the WordPress content management system is the possibility of easy installation, use, and settings in this wonderful CMS. By providing free updates and the possibility of installing these updates quickly and without problems, WordPress increases its security level and increases the scope of its applications every day. Unparalleled flexibility and the possibility of customization through the open-source program and the provision of templates and functional plugins increase the popularity of this CMS every day.
In addition, the existence of a high percentage of compatibility of plugins and templates and flexibility in design can be other advantages of this software. With the help of WordPress, the long and exhausting process of creating a website is reduced to a few clicks, and it puts website owners and businesses dozens of steps ahead of their competitors. Also, being SEO friendly and eliminating the attention of website owners to debugging and security issues leaves their hands open for planning to improve the site’s SEO and progress in providing services.
By solving problems such as optimized and SEO-friendly coding, WordPress provides a suitable platform for designing and creating responsive and mobile-friendly sites. Dozens of advantages and possibilities, along with the active support of the WordPress team and the advanced security of this company, go hand in hand to make this content management system a flawless system that is more popular than ever.
Disadvantages of WordPress
Along with the unique advantages of this CMS, WordPress also has disadvantages. Although its advantages are not so impressive, knowing them is not without grace. Some of these problems are:
I need to install a lot of plugins
You can almost say that you need a plugin to add any special feature to your website. Some plugins are free, and some are paid. But there are many problems in between. Sometimes the plugins found are outdated, no longer used, and cannot be installed. Also, some plugins are not compatible with each other and cause problems on the site. Some plugins make the site heavy and harm your site traffic. In addition, each plugin contains several separate files that inject a large amount of code into your site and allocate more space from your host.
The need for frequent updates to the theme and plugins
Another problem with using WordPress is that due to the extent of your website, you will receive new updates almost every few days, which, although rare, may cause problems for you.
Slow speed if you use too many plugins
WordPress is still a bit slow due to all the plugins provided, the non-saturated database, and the optimizations that have been done because the nature of this system is its flexibility and modularity, which, along with its advantages, also bring such problems.
Modification and customization require programming knowledge!
Very specific and personal modifications and customizations in WordPress always require an understanding of its functionality and programming language, PHP, for example operations such as deleting a date field and such modifications, also although it has many templates to achieve the ideals of website design. But to create your own unique and desired look, you need to know CSS and HTML