WordPress Beginner: Introducing WordPress (.org)

Name: WordPress Beginner: Introducing WordPress (.org)
Author: Chrissy Rey

Learn about the WordPress ecosystem

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Christy Ray, and in these lessons you'll learn what WordPress is, the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org, and where to define hosting for your WordPress website. So the first thing we'll do is answer the question what is WordPress? WordPress is a content management system and that means that it's an application. It's a software application that allows you to manage your website without having to know how to write the code to do it. In the case of WordPress the software is written in a language called PHP and the code looks something like this. So we can see here this is an actual PHP file from the WordPress code. This is the one that is related to registering and parsing blocks. If you wanted to, you could read this. You don't have to, again, you don't need to know the language in order to use WordPress, but this is PHP code. So WordPress takes that PHP code and it combines it with other types of code like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript which looks something like this. Puts all those together with the content from a database which might look like this. And in the case of WordPress, the database is in something called MySQL. So it's gonna take that content with all that code, wrap it up into a website that might look something like this. And we can see this website has images it's got links, it's got buttons, there's a shopping cart there's links to social media. I could add videos, I could add MP3s. I can add just about any type of content that I want to this website. But again I don't need to know how to write the code to do that, makes it really easy for me. Let me show you how easy. I'm already logged in as an admin user for this website. So I'm gonna click on this link here that says edit page and we'll see that takes me into the page editor which looks something like this. Now, if I wanted to change this text here which says the best chocolate in the world, I'm just gonna delete the in the world. So we're just gonna say it's the best chocolate. And you can see, all I had to do was select that text and I just clicked on my delete key, and that was it. It was gone. Now, if I click on my update button up here you can see that's gonna update it. And now when I view the page, we can see the website is updated. It's like magic. It automatically updated the website without having to write any code. Pretty easy, isn't it? Now, that's part of why WordPress is so popular. WordPress is used by about 40%, 40 to 45% of all websites on the internet. That's not just websites with content management systems. That's all websites. Every website out there, there's millions and millions of websites, almost half of them are created using WordPress. That's pretty impressive. And the ease of use is part of why it's so popular. Another reason it's so popular is because it's so extendable. You can create plug-ins which are extensions to the functionality of WordPress. You can create themes, which can change how it looks and you can extend that functionality of WordPress really easily. Another reason that it's so popular is because of its license. The license basically says what you and can't do with the software and the license for WordPress, if we take a look at it here, this is the actual license. It's done with something called the General Public License. So the General Public License, and you're welcome to go through and read all of this text if you wanted to. There's a lot of it, but if you don't wanna go through and read it, I'll give you the gist of it. It's got four basic freedoms. The first freedom is that you can run the program for any purpose. So you can use WordPress for any website you want. Doesn't matter what the topic is or the content, you can use WordPress to run it. The second freedom is that you can study how the program works and you can change it to make it do what you want. So if you remember back to that extendability you can create those plug-ins and themes. That's part of the license. You can create those things because the license allows you to. But the other cool thing is you can actually look at the code. So if you remember earlier, we looked at that PHP code, that is PHP code from the WordPress software. I could open up any of the PHP code in the WordPress software and if I knew PHP, which I do, but if you knew PHP you could read the code and you can see what it does. You can study it, you can do what you want with it. The other cool thing about WordPress and the third freedom is that you can redistribute the software. So once you get a copy of WordPress, you can zip it up into a zip file and you can send it to anybody else if you want to. You have the permission to do that with this license. The fourth freedom that you have with the General Public License is that you can distribute copies of modified versions of the software to others. So if you went through and you made a copy of WordPress, you changed the code because if you know PHP you could do that and you zipped all that up and sent it to somebody. You are perfectly allowed to do that. Those last two freedoms aren't things that you can do with every software out there. If you use other software you probably already know that doing that in some cases would be considered software privacy. You don't wanna do that. So in a lot of cases with software if you take a copy of it, you send it to your friends and family, that's gonna get you in trouble. That's not the case with WordPress, because again WordPress uses that General Public License. So I hope you found this useful. Thank you for watching. Stay tuned for the next lesson where I'm going to show you the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

Beginner Provider : Chrissy Rey 3 Lessons · 18m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

As the most popular content management system in the world, WordPress has a large and active user and developer community that has created hundreds of millions of websites using the software. It is built on a foundation of PHP and MySQL and licensed under the open source General Public License (GPLv2). Many beginners start off using a hosted version of WordPress at WordPress.com, which is very different from the free, downloadable version of WordPress available at WordPress.org.

In the Introducing WordPress module, you’ll learn about the WordPress ecosystem. This includes a look at the features that make WordPress so popular, including its open source license. In addition, you'll learn about the difference between the free downloadable version of WordPress available at WordPress.org and the hosted version available at WordPress.com. Finally, you’ll learn some criteria to consider when selecting a hosting provider for your WordPress website.

What You'll Learn

Understand the open source General Public License (GPLv2) that WordPress is licensed under
Describe the difference between the free downloadable WordPress.org version and the hosted WordPress.com version
Identify the features that make WordPress the most popular content management system in the world
Choose a WordPress hosting provider using criteria covered in the module
Explore the WordPress ecosystem, including its PHP and MySQL foundation

Key Takeaways

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world and has been used to create hundreds of millions of websites.
WordPress is built on a foundation of PHP and MySQL and is licensed under the open source General Public License (GPLv2).
The hosted version of WordPress at WordPress.com is very different from the free, downloadable version available at WordPress.org.
Selecting a WordPress hosting provider involves specific criteria to consider for your website.
WordPress has a large and active user and developer community.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this Introducing WordPress module cover?

It covers the WordPress ecosystem, including the features that make WordPress popular and its open source license, the difference between the free downloadable WordPress.org version and the hosted WordPress.com version, and criteria to consider when selecting a hosting provider for your WordPress website.

What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

WordPress.org offers the free, downloadable version of WordPress, while WordPress.com offers a hosted version. The course explains that the hosted version is very different from the free downloadable version, and many beginners start off using the hosted WordPress.com version.

Is this course suitable for beginners?

Yes. The course is titled WordPress Beginner: Introducing WordPress and explains that many beginners start off using a hosted version of WordPress at WordPress.com.

What lessons are included in this module?

The module includes three lessons: What is WordPress?, WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org, and WordPress Hosting.

What technology is WordPress built on?

WordPress is built on a foundation of PHP and MySQL and is licensed under the open source General Public License (GPLv2).