Have you ever heard of WordPress?

Learn what WordPress is, its pros and cons, in this guide from Dean of Hosting!

WordPress is one of the most popular and widely used content management system (CMS). This is due to its superior ease of use, in addition to its continuous development as an open source script.

Thus, a huge group of the finest programmers, developers and designers work on it continuously in order to add new features and features and fix security and non-security problems.

So don’t be surprised when more than one WordPress update comes out in the same month. This is unlike other updates to WordPress themes and plugins.

During this comprehensive guide on WordPress, we will provide the most important information on the WordPress script, its most important advantages, disadvantages, requirements to work on it, and how to use it in the best way.

First of all, let us introduce you to the WordPress system.

WordPress is an electronic content management system, blogging tool, and platform for self-publishing content. It was created using the PHP programming language and MySQL database system.

Both are open source and free and are among the most popular technologies used in creating websites and web applications.

WordPress is a free and open source system, meaning that it is not owned by a specific party or company that controls the modification and addition or deletion of its components. Rather, any developer, designer, translator or any ordinary person from anywhere around the world can use it, participate in its development, add, modify and republish it without being bound by any conditions. The WordPress Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization that organizes the development of WordPress and some other open source projects. It works with donations and proceeds from WordCamp conferences.

WordPress by the numbers.

There are some amazing statistics and numbers about WordPress, we will try to list some of them below.

More than a third of the internet uses WordPress

Statistics show that WordPress powers more than 35.2% of all websites on the Internet. In other words, more than a third of the web sites run the WordPress system to manage and organize their content, a percentage that confirms the popularity and quality of this system and is constantly increasing.

Among the sites that work with WordPress is the Dean of Hosting site, which you are reading one of his articles now!

More than 500 websites daily

Every day over 500 new websites are created using WordPress, which is a lot since creating a new website is not something a person does every day.

Millions of downloads

Every new version of WordPress is downloaded tens of millions of times

72 languages

WordPress is available in more than 70 different languages such as English, French, German, Spanish and certainly Arabic.

55,000 free add-ons

Yes, the number you read is correct!

The official WordPress Plugins Directory contains more than 50 thousand free and open source plugins that you can download for free or install from within the WordPress dashboard with the click of a button.

An extension is an affiliate program that adds more features and functionality to WordPress.

Not to mention the thousands of paid add-ons available on other stores like CodeCanyon or on developer sites.

4,000 free templates

A template or theme is a look or design for your site, and WordPress has an official guide to free open source themes with about 4,000 templates that can be downloaded or installed directly from within the WordPress dashboard easily.

Add to that, thousands of other free and paid themes available on stores like the popular ThemeForest and on theme developer websites.

These are not the only amazing numbers about WordPress, there are other surprising statistics.

WordPress Features

WordPress is full of features that appeared to solve problems that existed before and after WordPress came along.

The most important features of WordPress are as follows.

WordPress Templates

The WordPress system allows you to change the templates for the site. And the theme is the external design of the site. WordPress allows you to change the templates without deleting or changing the content of the site. You can also preview the template on your site before using it and make it available to site visitors.

WordPress templates are designed using some programming languages such as:

• PHP
• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript

In addition to the possibility of using frameworks such as Bootstrap and others.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress is characterized by the ability to add new software features to the version of the script that is working on the site, as these plugins provide new features on the site and there are about 30,000 plugins that can be used on WordPress sites.

An addon is a plugin that can be installed on WordPress in order to add a specific functionality or feature that is not available in WordPress itself. Examples include automatic storage add-ons that are used to increase site speed and reduce the load on hosting, SEO add-ons, and more..

Complete Membership System in WordPress

WordPress comes with a comprehensive membership system. WordPress enables you to allow users to register new memberships and to add and control memberships easily.

Each membership has a rank according to which the powers of each member are determined. This is a quick look at the membership ranks in WordPress

WordPress Member Permissions and Ranks

• Administrator: This is the highest rank and enables you to control the entire WordPress site, whether it is content or settings.
• Editor: He has all the power to control the content of the site.
• Writer: can add, publish, edit and control articles and files, and approve comments on their articles.
• Contributor: He can only add articles, but he cannot publish it, but the editor or director does it after reviewing it.
• Subscriber: does not have any authority to add or control content on the site.

With this strong system of memberships and ranks, the task of managing the site and organizing tasks for members is as easy as possible.

Powerful WordPress Dashboard

WordPress control panel

Certainly in order to control the site, you need a powerful control panel that enables you to control the parts of the site and the content.

One of the most important features of WordPress is the presence of a powerful and easy control panel at the same time, and you do not need any prior programming knowledge to deal with it. By using it, you can control the site and content and follow the workflow.

Constant updates to WordPress

Since WordPress is open source, there are a lot of developers working on adding new features, solving existing problems that arise and improving performance. That’s why you will be surprised by the almost constant updates of WordPress, themes and plugins that are applied with the click of a button automatically.

Not to mention the new system in WordPress which automatically applies security updates without your intervention in order to make sure that WordPress remains as secure as possible.

WordPress is open source

It is a great advantage for developers, as they can add and modify the script according to their needs and the needs of their sites. With a large class of top developers working on the same project, the code written will perform best.

A very large community

With such a large number of users and developers, WordPress provides solutions to most of the problems that you may encounter through a large and interactive community of developers and users who publish their own experiences on the Internet and provide effective solutions to the most common problems that you may encounter.

Plus tens of thousands of tutorials and videos on how to use WordPress, solve problems and get the best performance. There is also a technical support forum in more than one language with thousands of engaged members willing to help out for free.

WordPress supports mobiles and tablets

With the spread of the use of mobile phones and other tablets, it has become necessary for some sites to support all devices. The vast majority of WordPress themes, including the default ones, are responsive to all screens and devices.

Some sites may require that they have their own application and this is where the WordPress REST API comes in. This interface provides the ability to programmatically interact with WordPress from separate remote applications and software that are used to create applications for phones, tablets, and even desktop programs easily.

A friend of search engines

What makes WordPress popular with many is that it is search engine friendly. This helps to improve the performance of your site in the search results of search engines, increase the number of visitors and increase the number of customers as a result.

WordPress Disadvantages

Nothing made by man is without flaws or drawbacks. And WordPress is no exception to this. Just as it has advantages, it also has disadvantages, the most important of which are..

Safety

The script is the target of the vast majority of website hackers because of its great spread. Therefore, the presence of any loophole means that it can be used to hack a large number of websites.

But there is no need to worry, as statistics indicate that most of the loopholes are on the part of the users themselves as a result of misuse or as a result of using illegally obtained add-ons or templates.

There have been some hacks through hosting. That is why choosing a good WordPress hosting is very important in order to protect your site from hacking.

Some important and basic add-ons are paid

Although there are tens of thousands of free WordPress plugins and themes, there are many important plugins for many non-free sites.

But that is not really a defect, as paid services come with features that are not present in the free ones, such as professional technical support, custom modifications, and others, which cost companies money and effort that must return returns in order to continue the service with the same level of quality.

Types of websites that can be created with WordPress

One of the advantages of WordPress is that it gives great freedom to create different types of websites through it because it contains various features that serve the desired purpose in many different areas of websites. WordPress plugins and themes can be used to create almost any website you want.

The most prominent types of websites that WordPress can be used to create are:

Content management sites

Many types of sites fall under this type, such as news sites, people’s biographical sites, corporate and institutional profile sites of all sizes, as well as personal blogs, and all sites that require the addition of text content, images or videos.

Sites that offer paid services

WordPress supports the addition of electronic purchase and payment gates, so it can be used widely in sites that provide paid services to visitors, such as educational content sites and others.

Sites that require audience participation in adding content

It is a type of site that asks its fans to contribute to adding content to the site effectively. Such as job sites in which employers add the details of each job, as well as classified ads sites and real estate sites.

Plus, it’s easy to create a Facebook-like community or community site using WordPress as well.

E-Shops

As we mentioned, the WordPress script allows the use of online purchase and payment gateways.

Therefore, with its ease of use, it is an ideal choice for use in e-shopping sites and electronic stores due to the ease of displaying and adding products to it by the site owner, the ease of interaction of visitors on it, and the ease of their request for products through it easily.

There are popular plugins to turn your site into a full-fledged online store such as the free WooCommerce plugin that you can use to create a full-fledged online store using WordPress.