There are many reasons why you should use WordPress as the CMS content management system on your new website. I’ve got enough room to give you a very few of them. In the first place, WordPress is an example of “open source” (or free) software, which means anyone can use it. Geeks most probably will be aware that it’s constructed using the computer language PHP and uses MySQL. Don’t worry, unless you are a geek you don’t really need to know what all that means.
The stats are always changing, but it has been estimated that WordPress powers coming up to 20% of the websites in the world. That is a huge amount of websites. The WordPress download button has been accessed something like 30 million times. This means that if something should break down on your site (which it probably won’t), there are a lot of people out there who can help you fix it. You can reach some of them via numerous forums and user groups that exist for WordPress.
WordPress is a very complex piece of kit, but it’s so simple it works just as well for both beginners and experts. The basic version installs with just one click, but if you are keen to get stuck in with some complicated CSS or web coding, you are able to. Another fantastic thing about WordPress is that it’s very hard to screw up provided you keep away from the files with the code in. FYI, they can be accessed via the control panel in a file called Editor.
The primary job of WordPress when Matt Mullenweg first built it was as a blog, but it has developed over the years into a CMS that lets you make a website look just about any way you want it to. This happens because of “themes” which allow you to change the look and operation of your WordPress site with another click of the button. All this happens without messing with the content you’ve added to the website. Themes can be added via the dashboard within WordPress, or by uploading the theme’s elements by means of your usual FTP application. Thousands are available without cost, others cost anything up to $500. Premium themes I use include Zina, Socrates, Thesis and Jenzoo.
Search engines adore WordPress websites and simply by using WordPress seems to give you a head start to getting better rankings in Google and Bing. The way WordPress is constructed lets you optimize your website easily by using in-built components such as categories and ‘tagging’ to your posts. Heading tags such as h1, h2, h3, etc, are used throughout and pinging – sending notifications automatically to various bookmarking and search engine sites – is automatic. Each of these operations are already built into the infrastructure of WordPress.
On top of that there are WordPress Plug-ins that let you to extend your site’s capabilities much further than the basic features will allow. WordPress has a stock of over seventeen and a half thousand plugins performing a wealth of tasks ranging from adding a shopping cart to your site, including Facebook “likes” and building a Google sitemap, to displaying a form that will enable people top sign up to a mailing list and checking for broken links. Their sheer scope seems to be infinite.
Check out thesesite promotion tips that are sure to help you build a killer website.
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What is WordPress? Why is it so famous? How could it really benefit me?
These are the questions running through the minds of many thousands of designers out there who have not tapped into this invaluable resource. WordPress is the future of your web design world. It is what empowers freelance designers to meet tight deadlines and not die of stress when it comes to new and complicated manageable functionality. It is what gives so many an edge over the masses and enables us as designers to work faster and better.
If it’s this valuable, how do I get it? How much does it cost me in the means of time and effort?
It costs nothing in the way of price, and minimal in the way of time learning to use it, with unparalleled dividends. How to get it is simple: Go to http://wordpress.org/ and go to the download section. Get the zip file, and read the directions for how to mount it. More or less this is the process:
Go to the directory where you have your site, and upload the unzipped package of the WordPress files. Nextly, open example.com/wp-admin/ in your internet browser of choice. This will walk you through as simple form of installing some simple things for your WordPress site. One it says that WordPress works, you can go to your dashboard and get a feel for it. Now comes to uploading your work to it. Add your XHTML, CSS, etc. (the entire site you have made) to a folder in a subdirectory called wp-content. You will see other premade themes that come with WordPress already there. Create a directory for your own WordPress theme, and upload it.
Then go back to the wp-content folder. Go into another one of the theme directories, and go to their CSS file. You will see at the top a section with some info. It will be inside of some “/* */” brackets. Copy and paste this into the top of your CSS file, and change the info to feature your info. From there, go back to your WordPress dashboard, and go to the sidebar. Go to appearance, themes, and click. You will see your theme with no picture as one of the options. Click activate, and presto, you’re ready to go.
From this point, the sky is the limit as to what you can do with WordPress. There are many hundreds of plugins, add-ons, and tricks that will take you into your future with this design style. You can make any style, any type of site, and have it fully content manageable so that you can leave it to the client ready to use.
WordPress can be used for so many things including e-commerce sites, photo blog functions, social networks, SEO optimization, and so many more things. Learning how to use it, accessing your files through it, and so much more is within your reach as you use it for your advantage. You will see in no time at all that WordPress is perfect for you and your needs.
Next, learn how to build phenomenal landing pages or build a custom WordPress theme using Catalyst.
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