Introduction

WordPress is a free content management system (CMS). Let us understand more about what WordPress is, its benefits, how it is used, and the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

What is WordPress

WordPress is a free, open-source, web publishing software. Which means, anyone around the world can alter the software to make it better and anyone can use it as well. In simple words, it is software used to build your website. Created in 2003, it is the most used website publishing software in the world. WordPress is licensed under GPLv2 that provides everyone the right to use it and modify WordPress for free.

Features of WordPress

1. WordPress provides as many as about 11000 different themes that determine the look and style of your website. Also, there are over 55000 plugins and widgets to help optimize the functionality of your website.
2. It is very easy to edit text, font, and font size and create buttons in WordPress. Also, you can add images and videos to make your content more interesting.
3. You need not know coding, programming, or designing to use WordPress. WordPress takes the changes you make to your website and updates the coding itself. To help you design your website it has themes and plugins. Thus, WordPress is a very user-friendly software.
4. WordPress is also multilingual, so you can easily translate the text into your language.

Use of WordPress

WordPress powers almost 30 to 40% of the websites on the internet today. WordPress can be used to make different types of websites for personal as well as business use. You can build E-Commerce websites, educational or library websites, blog or portfolio websites, and many more on WordPress.

How to use WordPress

Let’s see in short how to start building your website on WordPress.

1. With wordpress.com:
   1. Go to wordpress.com and say ‘start building your website.’
   2. Enter details and you start building your website.
   3. Buy a hosting and domain and take your website live.
2. With wordpress.org:
   1. Download WordPress software from wordpresss.org
   2. Download XAMPP or Bitnami.
   3. Enter details and start developing your website.
   4. Buy a hosting and domain and take your website live.

Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

You might have heard of two different websites: wordpress.com and wordpress.org. Let’s see the difference between the two:

1. wordpress.com is a website of WordPress where you can go to make a free website with their web hosting. On the other hand, wordpress.org is a website from where you can download the WordPress software and self-host the website.
2. Working on wordpress.com, you have to follow lot of rules and regulations but when working on wordpress.org you need to follow a less.
3. You have access to limited plugins and themes when working with wordpress.com but with wordpress.org you have access to thousands of plugins and themes which help you optimize your website.
4. With wordpress.com, you do not own your domain meaning your domain name is seen like ‘(your domain).wordpress.com, but with wordpress.org you can own a unique domain name of your choice.
5. Last but not least you can monetize with ads only on wordpress.org.