Understanding the Basics of WordPress

For those who don’t know much about the Internet, WordPress is the primary content management system online that runs websites.  A website is a virtual piece of real estate that developers can use to create an online store, an informational blog or just put their information and thoughts out there.  For many people however, developing a web site can be complicated and time consuming.  Using WordPress will help break this learning curve and allow anyone looking to design a website to do so with ease.  However, if you don’t want to do all this or if you are having problems, you can easily get professional help with wordpress from a vast number of online sites.  To begin with here are the basic points of WordPress

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system. A content management system is a user interface that allows the user to manage text, video, audio and files online. These files when combined together create the content for your website. WordPress is the interface in which you will use to manage your content.

Pages

A page is a standard web page. These can be the home page, about us page, contact us page or even a page describing a product or service. Technically any html file that is created online can be considered a page. In WordPress however there is a difference between a page and a post.

Posts

Posts are the content pages of your website. Many people refer to a post as a blog. A blog is just a collection of posts. With posts you have specific options and features compared to a page. With a post you can have people leave comments, your content can have useful information such as categories, authors and more.

When defining the difference between a post and a page just understand that they are basically the same thing. There are just some additional features in a post compared to a page.

Plugins

The major component that makes WordPress what it is, are the plugins. Plugins are small programs that give your WordPress site its functionality. Many developers have created plugins that will do amazing things. Some plugins will allow you to run an online store where you can sell products where others will allow you to play games or enter information into a database.

The power of plugins is vast and range in so many different areas. If you have an idea for a feature or a function to incorporate into your site a plugin will do the trick. Also, if you have an idea for a feature and there isn’t a plugin available, you can easily create your own or have one developed for you.

Themes

Finally, the look and feel of your site is controlled by themes. A theme is a skeleton for the look and feel of your site. The theme controls fonts, colors, spacing and so much more. When trying to find the best look for your site you will want to explore themes.

Customization

Finally, WordPress is completely customizable. With some time, effort and thought you can design a WordPress site to look act and do anything you want.