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What Makes Wordpress So Great?

This is the first part of A Beginner’s Guide To Wordpress – there are seven different parts in total which will be published over the coming days. I’ll be covering a range of topics including an overview of how Wordpress works, the tools you’ll need to create your own blog, how you can perform a fresh Wordpress install, and some discussion of the main concepts related to Wordpress sites .

I’ll also provide some important tips to consider when choosing a Wordpress theme, as well as pointers to a number of important plugins that you will want to install on your new website. In this post I cover what it is that makes Wordpress so popular and why you might want to make use of it in your own projects.

Why Wordpress?

So, you’re thinking about building a new site – why should you choose Wordpress over other options? Here are some of the main reasons:

Ease of Adding New Content

One of the primary reasons for choosing Wordpress is how quick, easy, and simple it is to add new content to your site. Once you’ve completed your Wordpress installation and configured everything how you want, adding content becomes a breeze. You log into your Admin area, write the content for a new post or page, and then hit submit. Everything is taken care of – your site will be updated and your content will instantly be displayed live on your website. This is great for those of you who don’t want to get your hands dirty with code and enables you to focus on what you enjoy most – creating great content!

Templates

Wordpress also enables you to create templates for different types of pages – this is very powerful and offers numerous advantages. For instance, if you decide that you want to change how a page looks in some way (e.g. you want to use a different logo or change the color scheme), all you do is edit the template code, save the changes, and instantly all your pages will be updated. This is ideal if you have hundreds or thousands of pages in your site – without the use of template you would have to manually go through and edit each page individually – which as I’m sure you can imagine would be pretty tedious and mind numbingly boring!

Flexibility

Another reason you might want to choose Wordpress is due to its flexibility – there are a wealth of different features that you can enable, disable, or configure all through the Wordpress backend without touching a piece of code. For example, it’s very easy to change the whole appearance of your site (or individual elements of your site) with just a few simple clicks. Of course, as you become more experienced you may decide to learn more about editing the source code which will give you greater control over how your site works – although this is by no means necessary. With little or no programming experience you can still easily adapt, modify, and tailor your site to meet your exact requirements.

Extensibility

One of the primary reasons for choosing Wordpress is its extensible nature – there are loads of free plugins (and some paid ones too) that have been developed by the Wordpress community which allow you to add lots of extra functionality to your site. These plugins can drastically improve your site in a variety of ways whether it’s through providing Twitter integration and displaying your best Flickr photos, or whether it’s allowing you to create some slick animated effects or making your site run much faster. This list is almost endless and the best thing is that these plugins can now be installed and activated all from your Wordpress Admin area.

The Wordpress Community

A further reason for choosing Wordpress is the fact that it’s open source and now has a huge and passionate community behind it. This means that the software is regularly updated with improvements and enhancements being added on a frequent basis. There are new plugins constantly being developed that you can easily install and use. Free and professional Wordpress themes are really hot right now and there is some great work going on in this area with new themes being released on a daily basis. And if you ever have any problems with your Wordpres site, there are lots of helpful people out there willing to assist in support forums and on other Wordpress related sites.

Conclusion

So, that completes the first part of this beginner’s guide – hopefully you now understand why Wordpress is really popular right now and why so many people are making use of it. In the next part of this beginner’s guide, I’m going to touch on the core elements of a Wordpress site – this includes an overview of the files you get when you download Wordpress, the Wordpress database, and the Wordpress Admin area.

Table Of Contents

1. What Makes Wordpress So Great?
2. Understanding How Wordpress Works
3. Five Essential Things You Need For Building A Wordpress Blog
4. How To Complete A Fresh Wordpress Install
5. Wordpress Posts, Pages, And Other Concepts
6. Seven Points To Consider When Choosing A New Wordpress Theme
7. Ten Free Wordpress Plugins That You Should Install