About WordPress

Introduction

WordPress is a powerful and the most popular content management system (CMS) that enables you to create, manage, and customize websites and blogs with ease. It is an open-source CMS that is contributed by hundreds of developers worldwide. It’s built on PHP and uses a MySQL or Maria DB database. Around 43% of all the websites on the internet are powered by WordPress. It was created in 2003, by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

WordPress Ecosystem

The WordPress ecosystem not only consists of the CMS itself but a lot more to it. It offers thousands of open-source/free and premium plugins and themes that help users add more functionalities/capabilities and designs to their WordPress sites. A WordPress site can be easily customized to be anything from a static website to an LMS or eCommerce without typing a single line of code.

WordPress plugins provide specific functionalities to the site whereas WordPress themes are responsible for the looks of a WordPress site.

• Core - The CMS itself
• Plugin - An additional piece of software that can be installed on a WordPress website to extend its functionality and add new features
• Theme - An additional piece of software that represents the visual appearance and layout of a WordPress website

WordPress Plugin

WordPress Plugin is an additional piece of software that can be added to the WP site to expand the features/functionalities of the site. They are designed to integrate easily with WordPress and can be installed, activated, and deactivated seamlessly through the WordPress admin dashboard.

Some of the tasks a plugin can perform include, but are not limited to adding contact forms, creating SEO enhancements, adding security enhancements, integrating with third-party services, improving performance, or adding custom functionalities like e-commerce features or social media integration.

As of writing this article, there are more than 59k free and open-source WordPress plugins available on the official WordPress repository. There are tons of premium plugins as well that are available to buy through sources like CodeCanyon, Premium Plugins, and many more.

WordPress Themes

Altering your website looks is never a headache when using WordPress due to the availability of themes. WordPress themes are responsible for the overall design, layout, and styling of a website. They control how content is displayed to visitors and play a crucial role in the website’s appearance and user experience.

Similar to plugins, WordPress themes are easy to install and manage through the WordPress admin dashboard. They allow website owners to change the look and feel of their site without altering the underlying content or functionality.

As of writing this article, there are more than 12k free and open-source WordPress themes available on the official WordPress repository. There are tons of premium plugins as well that are available to buy through sources like ThemeForest.