What is WordPress? A quick and easy outlineExpress version: Welcome! Each lesson in this e-course has an express version designed to help you move through things quickly. Also, you can save where you’re up to in the e-course by clicking on the heart icon above the title of each lesson. View it in your faves list and come back to this page any time!

The lesson: Since this is a beginner WordPress e-course, we’ll start at the beginning – it’s a very good place to start! Exactly what is WordPress?

WordPress – also referred to as WP – is website software. It was originally created as a blogging platform, but grew into a full CMS (content management system) used to create more than 70 million sites. It’s used by bloggers and website owners big and small to easily create and manage their content.

Borrowing a description direct from the WordPress website itself… “Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an open source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it… It also means you are free to use it for anything… without paying anyone a license fee…”

WordPress is extremely versatile and allows you to create both blogs and websites, and with the simple click of a mouse, you can turn your website into forums, stores, directories, social networks and so much more. You can keep it very simple or you can make it very fancy – and everything in between. But before you do any of that, it’s helpful to know the following terms in relation to WP:

Themes

A theme is like the design/layout of your WordPress blog or website. In fashion speak, think of it as your site’s outfit. A great example of themes for fashion, beauty and lifestyle bloggers and business owners are the BluChic themes (I’m using Bluchic’s Maggie theme for this site (with a few customisations!).

Plugins

Plugins are bits of code that you upload as a zip file (so you don’t need to know what the code is!) that give WordPress some kind of extra functionality. Again, in fashion speak, think of plugins as your site’s accessories. As an example, a plugin may be used to manage which advertisements you want served on your site, or to give your viewers the option to create their own list of fave posts (such as seen on this site – by clicking the little hearts near each post).

WordPress themes and plugins don’t need to sound scary! They are basically zipped files that are uploaded to your WordPress dashboard (also known as the back end or control area) via an upload button (and we’ll cover more on that later).

Posts

Posts are the individual pages that drive the content of your website. New posts can be added daily, weekly, monthly – it’s up to you! They are usually displayed in reverse chronological order, and are mostly used for the purpose of a “blog”, but can also be used to create “entries” to form a directory or calendar (if that’s what you need).

Pages

Pages form the static content of your website – such as an about or FAQs page. They’re created and managed in an identical fashion to posts, but due to their nature, are not presented in a time-sensitive manner.

Widgets

Widgets are used to form the content you’ll find in your blog or website’s sidebars, and sometimes headers and footers (the top and bottom areas of your site) too. They let you do things like adding advertisements, newsletter sign-up areas, or a list of popular or recent posts.

Updates

Just like your smartphone, WordPress software, themes and plugins require updating on occasions. You will know when this needs to happen because a message or notification will appear within your WordPress dashboard. And also just like your smartphone, updates are easy to perform!

Domain names

Your domain name forms the URL that people use to access your blog or website, such as blogbizboss.com or google.com.

Hosting

Hosting is where your blog or website lives and runs – think of it as space on a big computer that you rent in return for the privileged of having your visitors access it day and night.

So now that we’ve covered the basics of WordPress, it’s time to move on and clear up any confusion between WordPress.com and WordPress.org!

Related video

In this YouTube video by user Shawn Hesketh, you’ll get another introduction to WordPress and its advantages.

I’m so glad you registered! Please introduce yourself below and either tell me about the blog or website you have (or the one you intend to create!)!

Next lesson: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: What’s the difference?