All Glossary

WordPress

A content management system used to create websites. Hundreds of millions of websites use it. Thousands of company create products and training for it.

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No potter or ceramic manufacturer these days should be without a professional looking website. The days of consultants charging tens of thousands of dollars for simple sites that don’t work are over, people do it themselves nowadays.

The best way non-coders to make one is using a CMS (content management system). CMSs provide a dashboard that enables creating a menu structure, adding and editing pages. The user interface is designed for anyone to be able to use. 2/3 of internet websites use WordPress (it is by far the most common system online). WordPress works like SquareSpace, Wix or Shopify. It is created and maintained by a company named Automattic, they front it at wordpress.org. They publish it as open source and free. It is the center of an ecosystem of add-on themes and plugins enabling it to serve just about any kind of business. A WordPress made site is full-featured and works very well, the base system provides a lot of functionality without buying add-ons. Add-on vendors claim their products are fast but that usually just means they are not super slow!

Automattic runs a hosting site at wordpress.com where you can subscribe for an account. Although it is not free, they manage various details of running the service (ones that either require some technical knowledge, are tedious or are often overlooked). Thousands of other service providers have similar WordPress offerings and differentiate themselves in various ways. Automattic provides detailed instructions on how to install WordPress for free on your own server. Default configurations these days do automatic updating and backup. There are many ways to move a site from one server to another or one hosting company to another. People running WordPress usually own their own URLs and exercise good control over costs and functionality.

Wordpress is a target of hackers. While the WordPress core, including WooCommerce, is considered quite secure, add-ons can create vulnerabilities (so they need to be chosen with care). A number of the most popular add-ons are made by Automattic, they come on a subscription basis.

PHP coders can add features to a WordPress website to make it do almost anything.

The WordPress world is adopting AI quickly, it is becoming possible to create entire sites, even the pictures, from a simple description of what is needed.

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