WordPress Introduction
WordPress is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS). It helps you to create and manage a website or blog without writing all the code from zero. You write your content in an editor, choose a design (a theme), add extra features (plugins), and WordPress shows the website to your visitors.
It is written in PHP and stores its data in a MySQL or MariaDB database. The first version came in May 2003 as a blogging tool. Today it is used on around 4 out of 10 websites in the world (W3Techs), so it is the most used CMS by a big margin.
What can you build with WordPress?
- Blogs and news websites (that is where WordPress started).
- Business and portfolio websites.
- Online stores, using the WooCommerce plugin.
- Membership, course and community websites.
- Documentation sites, job boards and directory websites.
- Your own web applications, by using WordPress as a back end with the REST API.
Why is WordPress so popular?
- Free: the software costs nothing. You pay only for hosting and for any paid theme or plugin you choose.
- Easy for beginners: you can add pages and posts from the dashboard, without knowing any programming.
- Themes and plugins: thousands of free themes and plugins on WordPress.org add design and features in few clicks.
- Flexible for developers: hooks, custom post types, the REST API and the block editor let developers build almost anything.
- Big community: a lot of tutorials, forums, agencies and events. If you have a problem, someone has already solved it.
WordPress is open source
The WordPress code is released under the GPL license. You can download it, change it and use it on any number of sites. You can check the real version of the software on your own server with WP-CLI, the command line tool of WordPress:
$ wp core version
7.1.4
$ wp core version –extra
WordPress version: 7.1.4
Database revision: 61833
TinyMCE version: 4.9110 (49110-20250317)
Package language: en_US
The numbers will be different when you read this, because WordPress gets updates regularly. This tutorial is written and tested on WordPress 7.1.
How does WordPress work?
When a visitor opens a page, the web server runs the WordPress PHP files. WordPress reads the content from the database, mixes it with the theme templates and sends the final HTML page to the browser.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Core | The WordPress software itself (the files in wp-admin and wp-includes) |
| Database | Stores posts, pages, comments, users and settings |
| Theme | Controls how the site looks |
| Plugins | Add extra features |
| Content | Your posts, pages and uploaded media files |
What you will learn in this tutorial
- Install WordPress, and understand the dashboard.
- Write posts and pages with the block editor, and use categories, tags, media, menus and widgets.
- Manage users, permalinks, themes, security, backups and updates.
- Learn the files, the database, debugging and WP-CLI.
- Go further with theme development, plugins and the REST API in the next sections of this website.
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