WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) built using PHP and MySQL. It can be used to create blogs, websites, and mobile apps. While originally designed as a blogging platform, WordPress has evolved into a full-fledged CMS. It is known for its ease of use, wide range of themes, and extensive plugin library. WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world due to its flexibility, customizability, and ability to be used without coding skills. It has an active community of contributors constantly improving and expanding its capabilities.

1. WordPress

2. What is WordPress
• WordPress is a free and open-
source Content Management System (CMS).
• It is an online site based on PHP and MySQL.
• It was mainly designed as a blogging tool but now it has
evolved into a versatile CMS. Where, you can use it to create a
simple blog as well as a fully operationable website and mobile
applications.
• It is even used to create an online store using some WordPress
plugins.
• But some people still misunderstand it just as a blogging
platform.

3. • It is considered as the easiest and most popular CMS tool due
to its features.
• The main feature of WordPress is its versatility and feasibility to
use. There is no use of coding and designing skills for creating
a website on this.
• Even a non-technical person can also create a website with the
help of WordPress easily.
• WordPress is an open-source community that implies
thousands of people from all over the world work on it. It is free
software.

4. WordPress History
• WordPress was released on May 27, 2003 by its founders Mike
Little and Matt Mullenweg.

5. Successor of b2/cafelog
• The b2/cafelog, a blogging tool was launched in 2001 by a
French programmer Michel Valdrighi.
• The programming language used to develop b2 was PHP along
with MySQL. It was specifically designed to write blogs.
• The major innovation in b2 was generating a page dynamically
from the contents of MySQL database instead of static web
pages.

6. • It also made use of MySQL for database which provides a
search option among the blogs present in the database.
• It was licensed under GPL which made its source-code open for
all.
• It was an unmaintained site. He worked on b2 till December
2002, and suddenly vanished. All the b2 users community was
concerned about the developing work of b2.
• Michel reappeared in 2003 and later joined WordPress as a
contributing developer.

7. Birth of WordPress
• WordPress is the successor and fork (copy of source code)
of b2/cafelog founded by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg. It is also
written in PHP language with MySQL.
• Matt Mullenweg, son of a software engineer, was a user community
member of b2. In 2002, he was a college student when installed b2
for his personnel use.
• When Michel Valdrighi stopped updating b2, then Matt decided to
fork the b2 software to do his blogging. He wrote a blog announcing
to fork b2 source-code, and got a reply from Mike Little stating that
he is also interested in forking and would like to work with him.
• On 1st April 2003, they created a less than 10 member team to
create their own version.

8. WordPress name
• The name WordPress was suggested by a friend of Matt
Mullenweg, Christine Selleck Tremoulet.
• The name was completely her idea.

9. Releasing WordPress
• After thousands of commits to the official SVN repository,
WordPress first version 0.7 was released on May 27, 2003.
• Next version 0.1 was released in January 2004 which is also
called Davis version. Name Davis was given by Matt as he has
affection towards jazz. From now on, all the updates are named
on jazz.
• Matt also used to include a plugin called Hello Dolly, in every
release. This name is a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

10. WordPress in current scenario
• Currently it is the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world
with millions of users every day. According to a survey,
WordPress encounters 22.5% of all websites on the Internet.
Today these millions of users who may be developer, writer,
blogger or designer make a living out of it.
• WordPress yet doesn't provide best use for mobile users.
Currently, very few large enterprises use WordPress as their
CMS. This number is gradually increasing day by day.
• All in all, we can say that future of WordPress is very bright.
Matt himself said that he envisioned WordPress as the leading
Operating System in coming years.

11. WordPress Versions
Version Released date Musician Purpose
0.7 May 27, 2003 none Numbering is continued with last release of b2
1.0 Jan 3, 2004 Davis Additions of search engine friendly links
1.2 May 22, 2004 Mingus Plugin support added
1.5 Feb 17, 2005 Strayhorn Added features to manage static page and theme system
2.0 Dec 31, 2005 Duke Added features like rich editing, faster posting, image uploading and many more
2.1 Jan 22, 2007 Ella Redesigned interface, corrected security issues, improved editing tools and content management system
2.2 May 16, 2007 Getz Widget support for templates were added
2.3 Sept 24, 2007 Dexter Some security fixes, added native tagging support and brought easy notification of updates
2.5 Mar 29, 2008 Brecker Improved systems like plugin, editor, multi-file upload, extended search
2.6 Jul 15, 2008 Tyner Made WordPress as more powerful CMS, enables track changes to every post and page and allows posting from
anywhere
2.7 Dec 11, 2008 Coltrane Added automatic upgrade, administration interface redesigned fully
2.8 June10,2009 Baker Redesigned widget interface, added improvement in speed
2.9 Dec 19, 2009 Carmen Added built-in image editor, global undo, batch plugin updating
3.0 June17,2010 Thelonious Added a new theme APIs, new default theme "Twenty Ten", new UI
3.1 Feb23, 2011 Reinhardt Added admin bar which is displayed in all pages when admin is logged in, a new writing interface
3.2 Jul 4, 2011 Gershwin Made WordPress faster and lighter seeing growing speed in WordPress community
3.3 Dec 12, 2011 Sonny Focus on making WordPress familiar for tablet users and beginners
3.4 June13,2012 Green Improvements on theme customization and other minor changes
3.5 Dec 11,2102 Elvin new theme "Twenty Twelve", support for color picker, retina display
3.6 Aug 1, 2013 Oscar New theme "Twenty Thirteen", autosave, post locking, admin enhancements

12. Latest Version
Versio
n
Released date Musician Purpose
4.6 Aug 16, 2016 Pepper Added native fonts, streamline
updates and content recovery

13. Future Version
Version Released date Musician Purpose
4.7 Dec 2016 none Release is scheduled for December 2016

14. Advantages
• It is an open source platform and available for free.
• CSS files can be modified according to the design as per users need.
• There are many plugins and templates available for free. Users can
customize the various plugins as per their need.
• It is very easy to edit the content as it uses WYSIWYG editor (What
You See Is What You Get is a user interface that allows the user to
directly manipulate the layout of document without having a layout
command).
• Media files can be uploaded easily and quickly.
• It offers several SEO tools which makes on-site SEO simple.
• Customization is easy according to the user's needs.
• It allows creating different roles for users for website such as admin,
author, editor and contributor.

15. Disadvantages
• Using several plugins can make the website heavy to load and
run.
• PHP knowledge is required to make modifications or changes in
the WordPress website.
• Sometimes software needs to be updated to keep the
WordPress up-to-date with the current browsers and mobile
devices. Updating WordPress version leads to loss of data, so a
backup copy of the website is required.
• Modifying and formatting the graphic images and tables is
difficult.

16. Reasons to use WordPress
• Creating a website without logical skill
• The most interesting and best part about WordPress is that
anyone can create his/her own website on this without any
coding or designing skills. Out of million users on WordPress,
most of them are neither designers nor programmers.
• To create a website on WordPress you only need an Internet
connection and a web browser.

17. Provide a range of Themes
• It gives thousand types of template options to give any type of
feel and look to a website. They are very easy to customize as
they come with their own option panel which allows users to
select colors, background, sliders, fonts, logos and many more.

18. Plugins to add functionality
• It provides both free and premium types of plugins. These
plugins add extra functionality or may give a whole new platform
to a website. It allows a user to add photo galleries, shopping
carts and much more.

19. Free and Open-source platform
• WordPress is a free and open-source software. It is free to
install and use. As a new user you can easily create a website
of your own that too absolutely free. It never has any type of
hidden charges once a user started using it.
• Being an open-source, you can alter the source-code according
to your need. Anyone can become a contributor to WordPress
by answering questions, creating themes or writing plugins.

20. Adding a blog is very easy
• WordPress came into existence with blogging and still mostly
consider it as a blogging site. It provides all type of blog
solutions from designing, styling to the anti spam solutions. It
will meet your demands in all possible ways.

21. More secure
• It only takes 5 minutes to install, and is really fast in updating for
security and new functionality. Upgrading to a new version is
automatic and very fast as it provides a one link click
upgradation. It constantly updates its site and software to
prevent from hacking.

22. Google and WordPress
• In a press conference in 2009, Matt Cutts, the head of Google's
web spam team said that "Google loves WordPress". Even
WordPress simple plugins and themes are also really attractive
to Google. WordPress is a better option when doing SEO due to
its framework which is easy to crawl.

23. Inserting Multimedia
• A user whether writing a blog or creating a website, need to
insert videos, pictures to make its content more powerful.
WordPress makes it very easy to upload a multimedia file or to
make some editing in files like images.

24. Mobile-Friendly
• A website needs to be responsive for small screens like tablets,
smartphones to reach all its users. WordPress is mobile-friendly
as its themes are made responsive.

25. Easy to use
• WordPress dashboard always look the same. You don't need to
hire an expert to learn how to use WordPress.

26. WordPress Licensing
• WordPress is licensed under GPLv2 (GNU General Public
License) which makes it free and open-source software. Each
copy of WordPress has a license copy with it.
• Predecessor version of WordPress b2/cafelog was also
licensed under the GPLv2.
• GPL is very popular in licensing open-source software under it.
It allows free installation, modification and distribution of its
source-code to others. Although, it maintains some rules and
regulations under it.
• Here free is referred to freedom and not price. It may apply
some minimal charges on certain stages.

27. What is GPL
• GNU software was written by Richard Stallman.
• The GNU General Public License is called GPL in short. It has some terms and
conditions to copy, modify and distribute the software licensed under its name.
• GNU makes sure that any software source-code licensed under it has to make
originating source code open and freely available to all its users. Here, freely
doesn't mean by cost but it means that it is freely available to users to distribute
and modify the code, but they can't impose any restrictions on further distribution,
source code has to be made available.
• Software allowing these facilities comes under the category of Free Software.
And if those rights need to be retained, then these are called Copylefted. The
GPL demands both.
• On 29th June 2007, the third version GNU GPLv3 (version 3) was released. It
was discovered to deal with some problems that were present in the second
version.

28. WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
• Both the sites are part of WordPress. Only difference is about
"who is hosting your website".

29. WordPress.com
• WordPress.com is the site where you don't have to do anything. All
the developing work will be handled itself. You don't have to
purchase software, manage web server or pay for hosting.
• There are some limitations with this site. For example, by default
your domain name includes wordpress.com, you can't modify your
site's coding, upload any themes or plugins. Your site will be free for
the lifetime, but you have to pay to upgrade it for more specifications.
• Upgrades also allow you to use a custom domain like you can use
anything as the domain. Further upgradation also enhances
appearance of your site, upload videos or photos and many more.

30. • Your site will be secured and spam free as it will be under
WordPress security. You only have to sign in and choose your
blog name and focus on your content.
• This site is preferred by everyone but mostly bloggers,
photographers, artists, etc.

31. WordPress.org
• WordPress.org is the site where you have to manage your own
blog or website. You can find free WordPress software and
install on your web server.
• It gives full control and freedom over your site including the
WordPress software. Most of the WordPress showcase sites
are made on self hosting.
• With full control it also places full responsibility of the site upon
the user. From technical dealing to security issues each and
everything has to be managed by the user itself.

32. WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
Features WordPress.com WordPress.org
Definition Fully hosted version Self hosted version
Cost Charges required for upgradation No charges for upgradation
Freedom and
limitations
Include more limitations Include less limitation
Maintenance No responsibility to maintain the site All responsibilities comes on user
Advantage Security and backups are provided You need to find a host to provide backup and
security
Themes Choose a theme and use it with the help of
custom design
Need to install custom themes then use it with PHP
and CSS
Plugins Plugin features are included Need to install plugin to add functionality
Registration Registration is required on WordPress.com No registration is required on WordPress.org