What is WordPress?

At its core, WordPress is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. WordPress powers over 33% of all the websites on the Internet – more than one in four websites that you visit are likely powered by WordPress. If you’re here reading this, so is yours.

On a slightly more technical level, WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system is basically a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website – like content – without needing to know anything about programming. The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone – even people who aren’t developers.

What Kinds Of Websites Can WordPress Make?

Many years ago, WordPress was primarily a tool to create a blog, rather than more traditional websites. That hasn’t been true for a long time, though. Nowadays, thanks to changes to the core code, as well as WordPress’ massive ecosystem of plugins and themes, you can create any type of website with WordPress. For example, not only does WordPress power a huge number of business sites and blogs, it’s also the most popular way to create an eCommerce store as well! With WordPress, you can create:

• Business websites
• eCommerce stores
• Blogs
• Portfolios
• Resumes
• Forums
• Social networks
• Membership sites
• …and pretty much anything else you can think of

What versions of WordPress are there?

WordPress is divided into two main iterations – pre-5.0 (the “Classic” WordPress) and versions 5.0 and up (aka “Gutenberg”). The main difference between the two is the interface used to create your site. Considering how the classic editor necessitates the use of several HTML and shortcodes to execute tasks, the goal of Gutenberg is to make the entire process easier, especially for those who are just starting up with the platform.

By using a ‘block’ approach to editing your website, Gutenberg promises to add advanced layout options to extend the functionality of the website without the need for prior knowledge of HTML or shortcodes. This may also reduce the need for third-party plugins, as much more feature-rich functionality is incorporated into Gutenberg.

Instructions for how to use both versions of WordPress are included here.