What WordPress is, how it works and why it is everywhere

WordPress is a content management system - a program that sits on your server and lets you change the site without touching code. You write in an editor, click publish, and the page exists.

It started in 2003 as a blogging tool and today it runs around 43 percent of all websites. That is not a marketing figure but data from the W3Techs market survey.

How it works

WordPress has three parts, and the split is worth understanding because it explains nearly every decision around it.

The core is the program itself. It is written and maintained by volunteers and companies in the community, it is free and it is open source.

The theme decides how the site looks. It can be changed without losing content - which is why a redesign on WordPress does not mean starting from zero.

Plugins add capabilities: a shop, forms, SEO tools, bookings. There are over sixty thousand in the official directory.

The content lives in a database, separate from the appearance. That is why you can change the theme and keep every piece of writing.

WordPress.org and WordPress.com are not the same

This is the most common confusion and it is worth clearing up immediately.

	WordPress.org	WordPress.com
What it is	the program, which you install yourself	a service that hosts it for you
Hosting	yours, you choose it	theirs
Plugins and themes	any	only on the more expensive plans
Control	complete	limited by their terms
Cost	free, plus hosting	from free to tens of dollars a month

When somebody in the industry says "WordPress" they almost always mean the .org version - the one you install on your own hosting. This piece, and the rest of this site, refers to that one.

Why it is so widespread

A few real reasons, not marketing ones.

It does not lock you in. The site is yours, on your hosting. You can move it, export the content or change supplier without negotiating with anybody. On closed platforms that is not always the case.

The client edits the content themselves. This is the reason we most often choose it. After handover, changing a sentence does not require a developer.

There are people who know it. If you stop working with one agency, you will find ten others who can pick it up. With a rare platform, that is a problem.

It is good for SEO out of the box. Clean URLs, a sane heading structure and good SEO plugins. It is not perfect, but it does not work against you.

Where WordPress disappoints

Honestly, because most writing on this stays quiet about it.

Plugins are both the advantage and the problem. Twenty plugins means twenty things that update, can argue with each other, and can slow the site down. A slow WordPress is almost always the plugins rather than WordPress itself.

It needs maintaining. Updates to the core, the theme and the plugins are not optional - an out-of-date WordPress is the most common target there is. If you have nobody for that, take a maintenance package or consider a platform that maintains itself.

A free theme with a thousand options is a trap. It loads all of them on every page, and that shows up in the speed.

Exactly what gets fixed on a slow WordPress site is on our page about WordPress SEO.

What it costs

The program is free. The website is not.

• A domain - $12 to $15 a year. More detail: how to register a domain.
• Hosting - $4 to $18 a month for an ordinary site. Guide: how to buy web hosting.
• A theme - free, or $60 to $120 once for a good one.
• Plugins - most of the free ones are enough; the serious ones run $60 to $250 a year.
• The build - if you are not doing it yourself. With us a brochure site starts at $1,900.

When WordPress is the right choice

It is for brochure sites, service sites, blogs, publications, small and mid-sized shops, and anywhere the client edits the content themselves.

It is not for complex web applications with their own logic, for very large shops with tens of thousands of products, or for cases where nobody can deal with updates.

For shops the usual choice is WooCommerce, the plugin that turns WordPress into a shop.

Security

WordPress is not insecure in itself. It gets attacked often because it is the most widespread, and what actually gets breached is nearly always an out-of-date plugin or a weak password.

Four things solve most of the risk: regular updates, strong passwords with two-factor authentication, backups you know how to restore, and removing the plugins you do not use.

In short

WordPress is a free program you install on your own hosting that gives you complete control of the site. It is at its best when you want a site you edit yourself, and at its worst when nobody maintains it.

If you are building a new site and want it fast and ready for search from day one, see web design or book a 30-minute call.