An Introduction to Wordpress

Ideas, Inspiration and a Creative Perspective on Marketing from Inside the Embassy

April 20, 2010

An Introduction to WordPress

BY Moosylvania Marketing Category Digital, Inspiration

This is the first article in what will be an ongoing series about WordPress. This article will provide an overview of WordPress and future articles will elaborate further on installation, features, enhancements, using WordPress effectively, and much more.

What is WordPress? WordPress is a powerful content management system (or CMS) and blogging platform that originated as a tool designed specifically for blogs. In the last few years, WordPress has been molded into a combination of its original blog system and a visual website editor. Learn more about it at wordpress.org and wordpress.com

WordPress has many features that make it one of the best content management systems on the market. Some of the features that make WordPress so great include: thousands of plugins (enhancement modules), tens of thousands of free themes (designs), ease of use – both in publishing new content and editing existing content, and automated upgrades to enhance the platform as it continually evolves.

One of the very notable benefits to using WordPress is the speed in which content published in WordPress is indexed by Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Additionally, content implemented through WordPress is generally quite SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. There is little extra markup in the source code that can create roadblocks for search engines. Also, WordPress creates an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. RSS is a feed that serves the basic content from your site to subscribers, making it easy for them to follow regular updates on multiple websites or blogs. Instead of having to continually visit your site and look for new articles or content, they are notified when changes occur.

Some of the free plugins that are available also connect WordPress to popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. When you post content on WordPress, it automatically publishes an excerpt and a link back to your site.

Thanks to these social media plugins and and a few of the others available, optimizing your WordPress site and content for search engines is as easy as ever. In one of my later posts, I’ll further further explain some of these popular plugins.

Below are some common questions and answers relating to WordPress.

QSo, WordPress is this wonderful system but how much does it cost?

Believe it or not, it is free.

Q If WordPress is free, do I need to pay someone to set up my site for me?

If you are very web savvy, probably not. If you are looking for any level of customization in the design, functionality, or just don’t want to take the time to hassle with it, you’re probably better off letting a professional install, design, and build your WordPress website for you. When the site is up and running, you can then take over by adding new content or managing existing content set up by your designer.

Q So…. how do I find someone to do all this for me?

Well, actually you’re already at the right spot. The Loud Few offers full WordPress design, integration, customization, etc. WordPress has a very active and loyal fan base of designers and developers, which is just another appealing reason to consider WordPress as your content management system of choice.

Q Why is there a WordPress.org and a WordPress.com? What is the difference?

WordPress operates both a .org and .com version of their site.

WordPress.com offers free blog hosting on their domain. All websites are published as a subdomain of WordPress.com. For example, marketingsolutions.wordpress.com might be a site related to marketing. The downside to hosting a blog at WordPress.com relates directly to SEO and content ownership. While you publish content on WordPress.com, you will be building authority for the subdomain on WordPress.com. If you installed a WordPress blog on your own web hosting account (or server), any content or authority you build will benefit your site.

WordPress.org is the developer side of WordPress. At WordPress.org, you can find updates to the program itself, download the full set of installation files, find plugins and themes, and find many resources for WordPress development.

Questions?

If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts or experiences with WordPress, drop us some comments below.

What’s Next?

In my next post, I’ll describe the process of installing WordPress on your own hosting account, I’ll recommend web hosting providers that support WordPress or have very good systems for hosting it, and explain how to upload or install themes and plugins.

About the Author
John Dawson works on various projects for the Loud Few, including anything WordPress, search engine marketing and occasionally fills in as our profesional photographer. You can learn more about him here or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/lonewolfdj.

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Tags: Wordpress