Did you know that WordPress is the absolute world leader for web creation?

At this moment, according to W3Techs surveys, the 31.7% of the world's web sites are made with WordPress, the following system, Joomlais a distant second with a 3,1%.

As you can imagine, this overwhelming dominance of WordPress it is not a coincidence and raises the question of what's wrong with this system that has allowed it to dominate the world of web creation in such an overwhelming way.

In addition, I will give special weight to some very frequent doubts and confusion such as, for example, the famous difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org which, to this day, continues to confuse all WordPress beginners.

What exactly is WordPress?

The simplest definition of WordPress is that it is a software application to create and manage websites (create your content, etc.).

There are many applications of this type, which are also known as CMS (?Content Management System?content management system).

WordPress has, in addition, the peculiarity of being a project of software free and open source which depends on the WordPress Foundationa non-profit foundation chaired by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress.

This means that its code is created and maintained by a community of thousands of volunteer developers (which guarantees its continuity) and that the application is fully available to you. free.

What is WordPress used for and who does it serve?

The reason for using this type of applications (CMS) is very simple:

allow the creation of websites and their contents in a visual way, without having to programThis is similar to working in a modern text editor such as Microsoft Word, for example.

This was not always the case. In the early days of the web, web pages had to be encoded in a language called HTML (a kind of programming language),

of which you can get an idea here:

How to make a web page in HTML: Tutorial from scratch

Creating a web page in HTML is surprisingly easy to learn for non-technical people and is well worth doing because it opens up a whole new level of possibilities for your website.

Programming in HTML by hand to create contents was tedious, inefficient and limited.

Creating a web page became a ?stone crushing? and, above all, things with a bit of functionality and logic, such as a simple comments section,

for example, required considerable effort and were only available to programmers.

That's why CMS were born: they are web applications that allow the user to create content with a visual interface,

in a simple and fast way and without programming knowledge, something that enables virtually anyone can handle them.

Then, it is the CMS that generates ?from behind? the HTML without the user having to intervene.

In addition, CMSs already incorporate the typical functionalities that are repeated in almost all websites, such as the example of the comments section I mentioned before, contact forms, etc.

What websites can be created with WordPress? ? Examples

Everybody knows that WordPress is widely used for the creation of personal blogs.

What is rather less well known is the fact that WordPress allows you to create virtually any type of website:

not only personal sites and blogs, but also corporate websites, magazines, online stores? Even for digital newspapersWordPress is a frequent choice.

What is often surprising is the number of world-renowned brand websites that are based on WordPress.

In the WordPress Website Showcase?  on WordPress.org you can find a list of Fortune 500 company websites,

which is Fortune magazine's annual list of the 500 most publicly traded U.S. companies.

Here you will find the websites of companies and brands such as Walt Disney, Time Magazine, Sony Musicetc.

I recommend that you take a look at the tag cloud page of the ?showcase? because here you will find hundreds of websites, organized by the niche they belong to.

Also, if you want to create a new website, taking a look at the websites of your niche or related niches is also a very good source of inspiration for yours.

What are WordPress plugins?

The fact that it is free and open source software has been one of the essential factors in the success of WordPress.

Another major factor has been its architecture that, thanks to the topics and the plugins,

is tremendously flexible which has allowed WordPress to adjust to virtually any need a user may have.

Let's start with plugins: ?plugin? is a term often used to refer to a software component (code).

with a very specific functionality which is very easily added to an existing application for to enlarge it with this new functionality.

This idea is also used, for example, in web browsers where many of them allow the use of plugins which are also called ?extensions?, ?complements?etc.

In the WordPress.org plugin repository you will find more than 50,000 free pluginsfor WordPress to add all kinds of functionalities to the WordPress brings ?from the factory? and is relatively basic.

In addition, you also have a huge amount of paid plugins from different brands.

An example of a very simple and very useful plugin that we use in this blog is the NextScripts Auto-poster (in its paid version).

This plugin, after publishing a post or page, automatically spreads it to all those accounts and / or social networking groups that we have configured, which saves us a lot of time.

In addition to this, there are other very useful functionalities, such as, for example, the ability to create a publication roundtablethat is, to periodically republish the existing contents.

The WooCommerce plugin page on WordPress.org.

Another example of a plugin, in this case, much more extensive in functionality, would be WooCommercethe plugin for creation of online stores most popular for WordPress and,

in general, one of the most popular solutions for creating online stores.

Both plugins are also examples of products that can be used for ?freemium? which are those products for which the manufacturer creates,

Along with the commercial paid version, a limited free version allows you to get to know the product before you buy it.

What are WordPress templates?

The templates (or ?topics?) are a concept very similar to plugins, but they are specifically designed for the web designWordPress look and feel, although they often include some functionality as well.

Templates work as layouts ?prefabricated?with its layout style, typefaces, font sizes, color sets and combinations, etc.

Here you can see a few examples among the thousands of themes available on WordPress.org:

The fun part of this is that the templates are 100% independent of content and that makes changing the design of a WordPress site almost as easy as changing a suit.

It is to choose a new template, activate it, make some minor adjustments (set up the logoYou can select header images, etc.) and you have already changed the design of your site completely.