Many people talk about it; having a WordPress website made, but what exactly is WordPress.

At its core, WordPress is the easiest and most popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, more than 37% of all websites on the Internet run on WordPress. Yes, you hear it well. More than one in four websites you visit is probably running WordPress.

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 free of charge. A content management system is basically a tool that allows you to easily manage important aspects of your website, such as content, without having to know anything about programming.

The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to everyone, even people who are not developers.

WHAT TYPES OF WEBSITES CAN WORDPRESS CREATE?

Many years ago, WordPress was primarily a tool to create a blog, rather than more traditional websites. However, this has long since ceased to be the case. Thanks to changes in the core code and the huge ecosystem of WordPress plug-ins and themes, today you can create any type of website with WordPress.

For example, WordPress not only supports a large number of business sites and blogs, it is also the most popular way to create an e-commerce store! With WordPress you can:

• Business websites
  
• eCommerce stores
• Blogs
• Portfolios
• Curriculum vitae sites
• Forums
• Social Networks
• Membership sites
• …pretty much anything you can think of.

WHO MADE WORDPRESS AND HOW LONG HAS IT EXISTED?

WordPress was created in 2003 as a stand-alone project, created as an offshoot of an earlier project called b2 / cafelog.

WordPress is open source software, so nowadays it is made by a huge community of contributors. But if we were to trace back to the origins of WordPress, the original creation was a collaboration between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

Since then Matt Mullenweg has largely become the face of WordPress. And he is also the founder of Automattic, the company behind the profitable WordPress.com service.

The history of WordPress between its creation as a blog platform in 2003 and today is long and …

But suffice it to say that WordPress has progressed and, thanks to its contributors and huge community, has become the most popular solution to create any type of website.

WHO USES WORDPRESS?

WordPress is used by individuals, large companies and everyone in between! We also use WordPress! So the site you are looking at now is made with WordPress. Many other well-known entities also use WordPress. Here are some of our favorite examples:

WHITEHOUSE.GOV

The official White House page is powered by WordPress.

The official page of the White House is made possible by WordPress:

MICROSOFT

Microsoft uses WordPress for its official blog. It also uses WordPress to support blogs for specific products such as Windows and Skype:

Autoblog.nl

One of the most visited Dutch car websites is Autoblog.nl. Also their websites Autojunk, Autowiki and Carwoman are WordPress websites.

WHY SHOULD CREATE A WORDPRESS WEBSITE?

Okay, so more than 37.6% of all websites on the Internet use WordPress, including well-known entities such as the White House and Microsoft.

But what about you? Why would you use WordPress?

Whatever type of website you want to create, there are plenty of reasons to use WordPress. Here are some of the biggest:

WORDPRESS IS FREE AND OPEN SOURCE

One of the biggest advantages of WordPress is that it is free open source software. Although you have to pay a small amount for hosting, you never have to pay to use the WordPress software, which is not the case with alternatives such as Squarespace.

In addition, you can also find many open-source plug-ins and themes to change the look and feel of your website.

WORDPRESS IS EXPANDABLE

Even if you’re not a developer, you can easily customize your website thanks to WordPress’s huge ecosystem of themes and plug-ins:

Themes – these mainly change what your website looks like.
Plug-ins – these mainly change how your website works. Plug-ins can be something small, like a contact form, or huge, like creating an e-commerce store.
There are currently over 50,000 free WordPress plug-ins and 5,000 free WordPress themes, as well as numerous premium options. That means – there’s plenty to choose from!

WORDPRESS IS FLEXIBLE

We’ve already discussed this, but WordPress is great because it allows you to create almost any type of website. Even better, your website can evolve with you.

Would you like to add a forum to your existing WordPress site? No problem – just install the bbPress plug-in! Do you want to add a social network? Don’t worry! Just use the BuddyPress plug-in.

You’re never tied to a specific set of features – you can always adapt and evolve.

IT’S EASY TO FIND WORDPRESS HELP

Because WordPress is so popular, it’s easy to find help if you ever run into problems. There are a lot of…

• Blogs
• Manuals
• Forums
• Facebook groups
• Developers

…where you can go for free and for a fee.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A WORDPRESS WEBSITE CREATED?

So what’s WordPress? It’s the best way to build a website. WordPress is not for nothing the most popular way to build a website. You can build any type of website, from a blog to an eCommerce store. WordPress is just a great option.

Would you like to have a WordPress website created after reading this article? Please contact us. We are very happy to help you.