What WordPress is and when to use it

A content management system

WordPress is a content management system (CMS): software that lets you create, organise and publish website content through a web interface, without writing code for every new page. You log in, write a post, add an image, press Publish, and the page is live.

Under the hood it is a PHP application that stores content in a MySQL or MariaDB database. When someone visits a page, WordPress reads the content from the database, runs it through a theme that decides how it looks, and sends HTML to the browser. The next lesson looks at that process in detail.

WordPress started in 2003 as a blogging tool and grew into a general CMS. Today it runs a very large share of all websites, from personal blogs to news organisations, universities and online shops. This course uses WordPress 7.1, the current release.

Free and open source

WordPress is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). You can download it, use it for any purpose, study and change the code, and share it. Thousands of people contribute to it, and the project is coordinated through WordPress.org, which also hosts the official directories of free themes and plugins.

"Free" refers to the software. Running a site still costs money for a domain name and hosting, and many people pay for premium themes, plugins or support.

WordPress.org and WordPress.com

The two names confuse many beginners:

This course teaches self-hosted WordPress, because it gives you the full picture, and everything you learn also applies to managed WordPress hosting. When this course says "WordPress", it means the software.

Themes and plugins

Two kinds of add-ons make WordPress flexible:

• A theme controls how the site looks: layout, typography, colours, and the templates that turn content into pages. You switch themes without losing content. Modern themes are block themes, which you can edit visually in the Site Editor.
• A plugin adds features: contact forms, online shops, SEO tools, backups, membership areas, and much more. The official directory has tens of thousands of free plugins.

Because the core handles content, users and security, and themes and plugins handle the rest, the same software can power very different sites.

A fresh install already includes some of each. Here is what WordPress 7.1 ships with, listed with WP-CLI, the command-line tool you will learn later in the course:

wp core version
wp theme list --fields=name,status,version
wp plugin list --fields=name,status,version

7.1.3
+-------------------+----------+---------+
| name              | status   | version |
+-------------------+----------+---------+
| twentytwentyfive  | active   | 1.5     |
| twentytwentyfour  | inactive | 1.6     |
| twentytwentythree | inactive | 1.7     |
+-------------------+----------+---------+
+---------+----------+---------+
| name    | status   | version |
+---------+----------+---------+
| akismet | inactive | 5.7.2   |
| hello   | inactive | 1.7.2   |
+---------+----------+---------+

The active theme is Twenty Twenty-Five, the default block theme. Older default themes are included in case you prefer them. The two plugins are Akismet (spam protection, which needs a free or paid key) and Hello Dolly, a tiny example plugin with lyrics from the musical Hello, Dolly!. Most people delete Hello Dolly; it exists to show how small a plugin can be.

What you can build

Common WordPress projects include:

• blogs and magazines, its original purpose;
• business and brochure sites, with services, team and contact pages;
• portfolios and personal sites;
• online shops, usually with the WooCommerce plugin;
• membership sites and online courses, with plugins for logins and paid access;
• headless sites, where WordPress manages content and a separate front end (for example, a React app) reads it through the REST API.

When WordPress is not the best choice

WordPress is excellent for content-led sites, but it is not the answer to everything:

• A highly custom web application (a booking engine with complex rules, a real-time dashboard, a SaaS product) is usually easier to build and maintain with a framework such as Laravel, Django or Next.js.
• A tiny site that never changes may not need a database at all; a static site is cheaper and faster.
• A site that depends on dozens of plugins to behave like an application can become slow and fragile.

The honest test: if most of the work is publishing and organising content, WordPress is a strong choice. If most of the work is custom logic, consider a framework.

What this course covers

The first half needs no programming: installing WordPress, managing content and users, configuring themes and plugins, and using WP-CLI. The second half is for developers: block themes, templates, hooks, plugins, custom post types, the REST API, custom blocks, security and performance. For that half you should know basic HTML and CSS and some PHP; the PHP course covers what you need.

Every code example and command in this course was run on a real WordPress 7.1 site, and the output you see is what it actually printed.

Common mistakes

• Confusing WordPress.com with self-hosted WordPress when following instructions; plugin and code steps often only work on self-hosted sites.
• Choosing WordPress for an application that is mostly custom logic.
• Installing a plugin for every small need, which slows the site and adds security risk.
• Never updating WordPress, themes and plugins.

Exercise

Write down a website you would like to build. List three things it must do. For each, decide whether it is content (WordPress handles it well), a feature a plugin could add, or custom logic that might suggest another tool.