What is WordPress? What are its advantages? How can I create a website using it?

WordPress is the best way to create a website for both professionals and beginners, as it provides many technical advantages and offers many benefits that no other method that allows creating and managing a website can provide, in addition to being very easy and smooth to deal with. But what exactly is WordPress? What advantages does it have that make it the best way to create a website?

How can it be used to create a professional website? We'll answer all these questions and many more in this comprehensive guide to the WordPress content management system.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free and open source tool that allows users to create all types and sizes of professional websites easily and quickly. On a more technical level, WordPress is known as a content management system for websites written in an open source, server-side programming language called PHP. A content management system (CMS, short for Content Management System) is a program that supports the cooperation of a number of users with multiple different privileges to publish and manage digital content on the Internet to achieve certain goals, by allowing them to write and format texts, upload media files such as images and videos, and perform many similar actions.

WordPress Components: WordPress and content management systems generally consist of two main sections: the content management application (CMA, short for Content Management Application), which is the section that allows content creators to enter content into WordPress without the need to know coding or programming languages, that is, it can be said that it is represented by a graphical user interface (GUI). Content delivery application (CDA, short for Content Delivery A application), is the section that works anonymously to transform data entered by content creators into a website that can be viewed by visitors through Internet browsers. It is not necessary to delve into learning more about these two sections at the beginning, but it is useful to know that they constitute WordPress in order to facilitate dealing with problems that could hinder work on the system in the future.

The difference between the WordPress.org website and the WordPress.com platform When talking about WordPress, one can get confused between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, and because we answered the question above (What is WordPress?), we must explain the difference between these two things so that the answer becomes clearer to you: WordPress.org: It is the official website for the WordPress content management system, and the system can be downloaded from it for free, and it includes many templates and plugins that help change the appearance of the site, and add more functions that are not available by default to the program. WordPress.com: It is a platform that is not completely free to use and allows the creation of websites based on WordPress. You can register for it and start creating a WordPress website directly without the need to purchase web hosting or any other requirements, but it does not allow you to benefit from the full benefits of the system. It is worth noting that when only the word WordPress is mentioned, it means the software that can be downloaded from WordPress.org, not the WordPress.com platform.

We have detailed more about the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com and highlighted the cases in which each is useful in a separate article entitled (The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org... How and when to use each).

Features of WordPress: In fact, WordPress has many features

It is a technical and non-technical advantage that provides many benefits to users, and the best evidence of this is its use by more than two-fifths of existing websites, as according to W3Techs, 43% of websites are managed by the WordPress content management system. The most prominent advantages of the WordPress content management system include, but are not limited to, the following: Free and open source. Both the freeness of WordPress and its being an open source system are among the most prominent and useful advantages of WordPress, as this prevented any company or entity from monopolizing it, and enabled users to use it without paying money. It also contributed greatly to its development indirectly, as a large number of developers cooperate to improve the system and contribute to developing its functions. We would like to draw your attention here to the fact that although WordPress is completely free, you may need to pay some money for web hosting and a domain name to create a professional website, and perhaps some other elements. You can see the article (How much does it cost to create a WordPress website?

) for more details on this topic. Easy to use: Although the WordPress system is one of the most powerful tools for creating websites, it is easy to use even for beginners who know little about websites and ways to create them. In fact, in order to create a website using it, you will only need to follow a few simple steps that do not require more than a few clicks and entering a few words. Also, after creating a website using WordPress, it is also easy to manage, as you can install and update updates, plugins and themes, change settings, manage content, and do other tasks through a simple interface that includes many useful, easy-to-use tools.

It is easy to customize the website through WordPress. It is easily customizable. Most people who manage their websites using WordPress do not have experience in designing and programming websites. However, they are able to customize the design of their site exactly as they want thanks to the presence of many free and ready-made templates that can be installed on the site, in addition to the customization tool that enables changing the layout and shapes of the various parts of the site. But the great customizability is not only related to the WordPress system itself, but also to the template used, as some templates do not provide high customizability, while other templates provide this feature, and the Astra template is one of the most prominent free templates that allows you to customize your site as you want by specifying colors, sizes, shapes, and many other characteristics. Read also: How to properly install a search engine-friendly WordPress template Optimizing the website to become compatible with search engines is one of the most important things for its success, because compatibility with search engines ensures an advanced ranking in search results for the website’s pages, and with the use of effective strategies in targeting common keywords, this will guarantee a large number of visits.

WordPress is friendly to search engines and can be relied upon if you want to be at the top of search results. The code written in WordPress is highly compatible with SEO, and therefore WordPress sites usually tend to be at the top of search results more than other sites built using other tools. There are also many plugins that allow the creation of highly SEO-compatible content, the most important of which is the All in one SEO plugin, which we explained in detail in the article (Explanation of the All in one SEO plugin to improve your WordPress site’s SEO). Very secure The security of the website relates to many factors, including the web hosting used, the actions that the user does or does not perform, the software used to manage the website, in addition to the accessories associated with it such as plug-ins, templates, etc., and to ensure that you do not suffer from security problems on the website, all of these elements must be at a high level of security.

WordPress plays its role in website security with high quality, and the security of the program continues to improve with the release of each update, and although it is not 100% secure like all other content management systems, the vast majority of successful hacking attacks are the result of not following basic recommended security instructions. Read also: The 5 best plugins to secure and protect your WordPress site with all the security features. It is expandable. The WordPress system does not provide, by default, all the functions that all website owners of all types and sizes need. However, you can do almost anything you want on a WordPress site without the need for programming experience. This is thanks to free and paid plugins that add functions to the system that are not available in it by default. In fact, the ability to expand the functionality of the WordPress system can be considered its most valuable feature, because without it the program would be very limited, and beginners would not be able to do everything they want on their websites, as they would then need to use programming languages ​​to add new functions to the program.

It is also easy to download and activate plugins on a WordPress website, as there is a special section in the backend that enables the user to do that. You can search in the plugins section on the program’s official website through that section, then click on the install button to install the component on your site as simple as that. Read also: How to install a WordPress plugin and activate it on your site correctly. The presence of a huge community. Given that the WordPress content management system is very popular, there are many explanations on how to use it and solve the problems that you may encounter while managing the site by relying on it on the Internet. Therefore, in most cases, you will not need to hire someone to solve the problems or teach you how to use the system, but you can search, read, and learn yourself. WordPress explanations on the Internet are not limited to the English language in fact. Rather, they are available in a large number of languages ​​around the world, including Arabic. Our WordPress website in Arabic is one of the best sources for these explanations, as it provides high-quality explanations suitable for beginners and experts, and supports the ability to comment below each article to facilitate the provision of specific assistance to website owners in the Arab world.

Disadvantages of the WordPress system: Although there are a large number of technical and non-technical features of the WordPress content management system, it, like any other program, suffers from defects. The most important defects of the WordPress program include: the need to install a large number of plugins to manage some types of sites with high professionalism, and managing and updating these components on an ongoing basis may be cumbersome and difficult. The possibility of plugins and themes not being compatible with each other if there are a large number of them on a WordPress site, as well as compatibility problems sometimes occurring after updating some elements. A large number of basic functions that all websites need are not integrated into the system by default, such as the backup function, and this causes many obstacles for WordPress website owners.

The WordPress content management system also suffers from some other defects, but all the defects it suffers from do not stand in the way of creating a professional website whose pages rank at the top of search results by relying on it, so these defects should not prevent you from using it to create your successful website. Comparison between WordPress and other content management systems Comparison between the most famous content management systems In fact, there are many content management systems on the Internet, and it is difficult to compare them all with WordPress in one paragraph, but there are two programs that accompany WordPress in topping the lists of the best and most popular content management systems, which are Joomla and Drupal, so we will compare them in the following table with WordPress. A table comparing WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Requirements for creating a website using WordPress. WordPress does not enable you to create a website based on it alone, but there are many requirements that you need in addition to it to be able to create a website, and among the most important of these requirements are: Web hosting: It is the element that stores the site’s data and sends it to visitors when they request it so that they can view its pages and deal with it.

Domain name: It is the website address that allows visitors to access site data. They can enter it in the address box in the browser and go to the site. WordPress: It is a free content management system that is installed on the hosting in order to facilitate the creation and management of a website. You may also need many other elements to create a professional website using WordPress, and not all of these elements may be free, but some of them may be paid, as we mentioned earlier above.

How to create a website with WordPress The WordPress content management system allows you to create all types and sizes of websites, including blogs, business websites, online stores, business galleries, multilingual sites, encyclopedias, magazines, and more. How to create a website using the WordPress content management system. The methods for creating different types of websites using WordPress share many steps, but they also differ in many other steps, as a specific type of website may require a template and additional components that differ from other types of websites. Therefore, we cannot explain in detail how to create a website here, but we can explain the main common steps that this process goes through, and the details of these steps may differ depending on the type and purpose of the site, and some sites may need more additional steps.

The main steps for creating a website using WordPress include: Determining the main goal of the site. Purchase a domain name and web hosting. Installing WordPress on hosting.

Install and activate the appropriate template. Install and activate the necessary plugins.

Add content to the site and publish it.

Promote the site to get visits. Invest in the site to achieve its goal. We would like to draw attention to the fact that although you may need to seek the help of an expert in some rare cases to carry out some exceptional tasks, in the normal case you can carry out all the steps yourself if you are prepared to research and learn from the Internet. We have explained in several detailed articles how to create specific types of websites, some of which are explained in the following list: How to create and design a website for doctors or your medical center.

Learn to create a social networking site using WordPress without programming experience. Create a reviews website in WordPress to talk about other people’s products.

How to create a conference or event website on WordPress.

Steps to create a paid consulting website with WordPress. How to create a forum on WordPress step by step. Create an auction site in WordPress, similar to eBay auctions.

Create a website for your own restaurant and provide food sales and delivery services to customers. How to create a membership site for two types of participants with specific permissions. There are also many other explanations that help in creating and managing all types of websites in the various sections of our site, and you can use the search engine on the site to reach what you want.

Frequently asked questions about the WordPress content management system Is WordPress suitable for beginners? Yes. The WordPress content management system is one of the easiest programs to create websites, as it does not require any programming experience, so it is well suited for beginners who want to start their own websites.

Can I program a website with the specific specifications I want on WordPress? If you have experience in coding and programming languages, you can of course use your experience to create and adapt your website that you created through WordPress as you wish, as you can make the necessary modifications to the code to change certain aspects of the site. You can also create a custom template and then install and activate it on your site if you do not want to use a ready-made template.

Can WordPress be installed locally on a computer?

The WordPress content management system can be installed on your computer locally instead of on web hosting, but the purpose of doing this is not to create a website, as in this case your site will not be available for others to visit, but rather to test or create plugins and themes. Is it possible to create an integrated online store using WordPress? In fact, yes, WordPress provides the ability to create an integrated online store based on e-commerce add-ons such as WooCommerce and others, and we have explained in detail how to do that in a separate article entitled (WooCommerce explanation for creating an integrated online store - step by step).

What languages ​​does WordPress support? WordPress supports a large number of languages, as it has been fully translated into more than 65 languages, including Arabic of course. However, not all plugins and ready-made templates are available in all languages, and you may have to use them in a foreign language or Arabize them and then use them on your website. Thus, we have finished introducing you to the WordPress content management system and its advantages and disadvantages, comparing it with the most famous content management systems similar to it, explaining the requirements for creating a website using it and how to do that, and answering the most frequently asked questions about it. In conclusion, we would like to point out that regardless of the specifications of the website you want, you will definitely be able to create it based on WordPress, whether you are a beginner or a developer.