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| What is WordPress |
What is WordPress? Explaining the advantages and disadvantages of WordPress in 2021
WordPress is one of the most popular and widely used online CMS. This is due to its superior ease of use, in addition to its continuous development as an open source script.
Learn about WordPress, the most popular open source website and blog builder that is responsible for creating more than a third of all websites. The Dean of Hosting team will also explain the advantages and disadvantages of WordPress, its requirements, how to choose the best WordPress hosting, how to easily create a WordPress site, and more.
Thus, a huge group of the finest programmers, developers and designers work on it continuously in order to add new features and features and fix security and non-security problems.
So don't be surprised when more than one WordPress update comes out in the same month. This is unlike other updates to WordPress themes and plugins.
And during this comprehensive guide about WordPress, we will provide the most important information on the WordPress script, its most important advantages, disadvantages, requirements to work on it, and how to use it in the best way.
In addition to the types of sites that can be created with WordPress and how to create a WordPress site correctly with tips for choosing a good site hosting since the Dean of Hosting site is a site that specializes in web hosting in the first place.
Directory contents
- What is WordPress?
- WordPress Features
- WordPress Disadvantages
- WordPress sites
- WordPress requirements
- WordPress Hosting
- Create a wordpress blog
- Question and Answer
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an electronic content management system, blogging tool, and platform for self-publishing content. It was created using the PHP programming language and the MySQL database system.
Both are open source and free and are among the most popular technologies used in creating websites and web applications.
WordPress is a free and open source system, meaning that it is not owned by a specific party or company that controls the modification and addition or deletion of its components. Rather, any developer, designer, translator or any ordinary person from anywhere around the world can use it, participate in its development, add, modify and republish it without being bound by any conditions.
The WordPress Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization that organizes the development of WordPress and some other open source projects. It works with donations and proceeds from WordCamp conferences.
WordPress by the numbers.
There are some amazing statistics and numbers about WordPress, we will try to list some of them below.
More than a third of the internet uses WordPress
Statistics show that WordPress powers more than 35.2% of all websites on the Internet. In other words, more than a third of the web sites are running the WordPress system to manage and organize their content, a percentage that confirms the popularity and quality of this system and is constantly increasing.
Among the sites that work with WordPress is the Dean of Hosting site, which you are reading one of his articles now!
Over 500 websites daily
Every day over 500 new sites are created using WordPress, which is a huge number since creating a new site is not something one does every day.
Millions of downloads
Each new version of WordPress is downloaded tens of millions of times.
72 languages
WordPress is available in more than 70 different languages such as English, French, German, Spanish and certainly Arabic.
55,000 FREE Add-ons
Yes, the number you read is correct!
The official WordPress plugins directory contains more than 50 thousand free and open source plugins that you can download for free or install from within the WordPress dashboard with the click of a button.
An extension is an affiliate program that adds more features and functionality to WordPress.
Not to mention the thousands of paid add-ons available on other stores like CodeCanyon or on developer sites.
4,000 free templates
A template or theme is the look or design of your site, and WordPress has an official guide to free open source themes with about 4,000 templates that can be downloaded or installed directly from within the WordPress dashboard easily.
Add to that, thousands of other free and paid themes available on stores like the popular ThemeForest and on theme developer websites.
These are not the only amazing numbers about WordPress, there are other surprising statistics.
WordPress Features
WordPress is full of features that appeared to solve the problems that existed before and after the emergence of WordPress as well.
The most important features of WordPress are as follows.
WordPress Templates
The WordPress system allows you to change the templates for the site. The theme is the external design of the site. WordPress allows you to change the templates without deleting or changing the content of the site. You can also preview the template on your site before using it and make it available to site visitors.
WordPress templates are designed using some programming languages such as:
PHP
HTML HTML
CSS
JavaScript
In addition to the possibility of using frameworks such as Bootstrap and others.
WordPress Plugins
WordPress is characterized by the ability to add new software features to the version of the script that is working on the site, as these plugins provide new features on the site and there are about 30,000 plugins that can be used on WordPress sites.
An extension is a plugin that can be installed on WordPress in order to add a specific functionality or feature that is not available in WordPress itself. Examples include automatic storage add-ons that are used to increase site speed and reduce the load on hosting, SEO add-ons, and more..
Complete Membership System in WordPress
WordPress comes with a comprehensive membership system. WordPress enables you to allow users to register new memberships and to add and control memberships easily.
Each membership has a rank according to which the powers of each member are determined. This is a quick look at the membership ranks in WordPress
WordPress Member Permissions and Ranks
Administrator: This is the highest rank and enables you to control the entire WordPress site, whether it is content or settings.
Editor: He has all the power to control the content of the site.
Writer: can add, publish, edit and control articles and files and approve comments on their articles.
Contributor: He can only add articles, but he cannot publish it, but the editor or director does it after reviewing it.
Subscriber: does not have any authority to add or control content on the site.
With this strong system of memberships and ranks, the task of managing the site and organizing tasks for members is as easy as possible.
Powerful WordPress Dashboard
Certainly in order to control the site, you need a powerful control panel that enables you to control parts of the site and content.
One of the most important features of WordPress is the presence of a powerful and easy control panel at the same time, and you do not need any prior programming knowledge to deal with it. By using it, you can control the site and content and follow the workflow.
Constant updates to WordPress
Since WordPress is open source, there are a lot of developers working on adding new features, solving existing problems that arise and improving performance. That's why you will be surprised by the almost constant updates of WordPress, themes and plugins that are applied with the click of a button automatically.
Not to mention the new system in WordPress which automatically applies security updates without your intervention in order to make sure that WordPress remains as secure as possible.
WordPress is open source
It is a great advantage for developers, as they can add and modify the script according to their needs and the needs of their sites. With a large class of top developers working on the same project, the code written will perform best.
huge community
With such a large number of users and developers, WordPress provides solutions to most of the problems that you may encounter through a large and interactive community of developers and users who publish their own experiences on the Internet and provide effective solutions to the most common problems that you may encounter.
Plus tens of thousands of tutorials and videos on how to use WordPress, solve problems and get the best performance. There is also a technical support forum in more than one language with thousands of active members willing to help out for free.
WordPress supports mobiles and tablets
With the spread of the use of mobile phones and other tablets, it has become necessary for some sites to support all devices. The vast majority of WordPress themes, including the default ones, are responsive to all screens and devices.
Some sites may require that they have their own application and this is where the WordPress REST API comes in. This interface provides the ability to programmatically interact with WordPress from separate remote applications and software that are used to create applications for phones, tablets, and even desktop programs easily.
A friend of search engines
What makes WordPress popular with many is that it is search engine friendly. This helps to improve the performance of your site in the search results of search engines, increase the number of visitors and increase the number of customers as a result.
WordPress Disadvantages
Nothing made by man is without flaws or drawbacks. And WordPress is no exception to this. Just as it has advantages, it also has disadvantages, the most important of which are..
Safety
The script is the target of the vast majority of website hackers because of its great spread. Therefore, the presence of any loophole means that it can be used to hack a large number of websites.
But there is no need to worry, as statistics indicate that most of the loopholes are on the part of the users themselves as a result of misuse or as a result of using illegally obtained add-ons or templates.
There have been some hacking through hosting. That is why choosing a good WordPress hosting is very important in order to protect your site from hacking.
Some important and basic add-ons are paid
Although there are tens of thousands of free WordPress plugins and themes, there are many important plugins for many non-free sites.
But that is not a defect in fact, as paid services come with features that are not present in the free ones such as professional technical support, custom modifications, and others, which cost companies money and effort that must return returns in order to continue the service with the same level of quality.
Types of websites that can be created with WordPress
One of the advantages of WordPress is that it gives great freedom to create different types of websites through it because it contains various features that serve the desired purpose in many different areas of websites. WordPress plugins and themes can be used to create almost any website you want.
Among the most prominent types of sites that can be used to create WordPress:
Content management sites
Many types of sites fall under this type, such as news sites, people's biographical sites, and profile sites for companies and institutions of all sizes, as well as personal blogs, and all sites that require adding text content, images or videos.
Websites that offer paid services
WordPress supports the addition of electronic purchase and payment gates, so it can be used widely in sites that provide paid services to visitors, such as educational content sites and others.
Sites that require audience participation in adding content
It is a type of site that asks its fans to contribute to adding content to the site effectively. Such as job sites in which employers add the details of each job, as well as classified ads sites and real estate sites.
Plus, it's easy to create a Facebook-like community or community site using WordPress as well.
E-Shops
As we mentioned, the WordPress script allows the use of online purchase and payment gateways.
Therefore, with its ease of use, it is an ideal choice for use in e-shopping sites and electronic stores due to the ease of displaying and adding products to it by the site owner, the ease of interaction of visitors on it, and the ease of their request for products through it easily.
There are popular plugins to turn your site into a full-fledged online store such as the free WooCommerce plugin that you can use to create a full-fledged online store using WordPress.
And if you are looking for hosting for your online store that uses WooCommerce, Dean of Hosting has prepared a complete guide on WooCommerce hosting with the best companies, their features, the services we recommend for each hosting, their features and prices.
WordPress website requirements
In order to create your own WordPress website or blog, you need a few things:
hosting
And hosting is the most important requirement for WordPress, which is the server or server on which the website files will be uploaded. There are many types of hosting services such as the most popular and low-priced shared hosting, VPS servers, full servers, and cloud hosting.
There are also two types of hosting in terms of price. We find the free WordPress hosting that we do not recommend to use except for trial purposes only because of its drawbacks. There is also paid hosting, which also varies according to the services and features it provides, adding speed and efficiency to the performance of the site.
WordPress sites need hosting like all other sites.
There are many global hosting companies that provide hosting services compatible with WordPress and include tools dedicated to WordPress sites, and the most famous of these companies are:
When buying hosting for a WordPress site or any site in general, there are many factors to consider. The most prominent of these factors are:
Hosting Quality
You should be careful to choose a good web host for your site so that you do not suffer from slow or downtime afterwards. You can use the reviews of the web hosting companies provided by him to know the advantages and disadvantages of each of the companies and whether they are suitable for you or not.
wordpress hosting price
Keep in mind that the hosting price should be within your hosting budget. And choosing special offers and discount coupons on hosting prices that save you a lot of money and guarantee you powerful offers such as getting free hosting and a domain with it, such as the exclusive Bluehost hosting discount coupon for visitors to the hosting site.
Technical support provided by the hosting company
As it is expected that you will encounter many technical problems while working on hosting, which are difficult to deal with without experience, and therefore you should choose a hosting company that provides a strong technical support system for its customers.
Hosting Resources
The number of visitors and the expected size of the site must be determined so that the hosting space, bandwidth and other other web hosting resources are chosen on the basis of it so that this does not cause problems later that lead to the site being constantly disrupted.
number of sites
The number of independent websites with different domains that are allowed to be hosted on the same account is something to keep in mind if you want to create more websites without additional costs.
Usually, the small shared hosting package allows hosting only one website and the larger packages allow hosting more than one website on the same account. But Inmotion Hosting broke this rule, as the smaller package allows you to create two websites on the same account without additional fees.
Domain
It is one of the most important things that you must choose carefully when creating any website, because of its great importance.
Domain is the first thing a visitor knows about your site. Before the visitor sees the site, he sees his domain!
Therefore, it is necessary to be careful about choosing it, taking into account that you are buying a good and attractive domain.
And the domain “domain” is the website address (eg: www.google.com and hostingdean.com).
It is possible that the domain is specific to geographic regions and countries, such as the eg domain. For the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the domain can be global, such as .com. The most common.
There are many factors to consider when choosing a domain for your site, the most important of which are:
To express your site, the more the domain is clear and direct and contains understandable words that refer to your site and its specialization, the better it is and gives effective results in the visitors’ access to the site easily from search engines.
To be short and easy to memorize, as this will lead to more interaction of visitors, ease of return to the site and ease of remembering.
The history of the domain, as the history of the domain must be taken into account and disclosed if it has been used before to avoid buying a banned or notorious domain that may harm your site.
good wordpress hosting
As we mentioned, choosing a hosting for your site is one of the first and most important steps in creating your site, and we also mentioned a number of factors that must be considered while choosing hosting.
But it should be noted that web hosting that is used to host the WordPress script has several different criteria that must be taken into account, as the server on which the site will be uploaded must be compatible with the WordPress script and prepared to deal with it.
This will help in the technically efficient work of the site and avoid many problems that lead to downtime and slow down the site and may also lead to a hack if it is poorly hosted.
There are many factors that must be present in WordPress hosting in order for WordPress to work on it:
The version of the PHP programming language should be from the seventh version or higher.
The database language version should be MySQL 5.6 or higher or MariaDB 10.1 or higher.
It is also recommended that you have backup copies of your site files and database in case there might be any problem or error in the future. Ensure that your hosting supports the HTTPS protocol provided by the SSL certificate in order to protect your data and visitors.
There are many other factors and important procedures to follow to get the best WordPress hosting.
Given the importance of this point, we have prepared a comprehensive guide on the best WordPress hosting companies and how to choose hosting like a pro that we advise you to read.
How to create a wordpress blog
One of the popular types of websites are blogs that are used for personal purposes such as displaying a biography, introducing an organization or a product, or for blogging purposes and interacting with visitors.
Bloggers often prefer to use the WordPress script in creating blogs due to the ease of dealing with it, whether by visitors or by site owners.
There are important steps that must be followed in order to create a WordPress blog, among the most important of these steps:
Choosing the appropriate hosting and blog scope, according to the blog’s activity and purpose, as well as according to the expected site size and number of visitors.
Install the WordPress script and choose a suitable template for the blog.
Add the blog's data such as description, website address and other basic data for the blog.
Create the main pages that help the quality of interaction of visitors and search engines with the blog, such as the Contact Us page and the About Us page.
After starting work, start choosing the WordPress plugins that you need, whether paid or free, as WordPress provides thousands of plugins that help improve the work of the site and interaction with visitors.
After doing these main steps, you can start working and blogging on your blog normally.
And then you must follow the policies of search engines and the rules of SEO in order to publish good content that attracts visitors and is suitable for search engines, which helps to achieve full benefit, whether material or literary, from your blog.
We have prepared a comprehensive guide on creating a website or blog using WordPress in minutes with an explanation of buying hosting with videos and images, do not forget to read it.
WordPress Frequently Asked Questions
This is a set of questions that many ask about WordPress with their answers.
✅ What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open source blogging tool and content management system used by more than a third of all websites. And you can read more about what WordPress is here.
✅ Is WordPress Really Free?
Yes, WordPress itself is completely free. But you need to buy hosting for your site and a domain, and you may need to buy a paid template or paid plugins even though there are thousands of them for free.
✅ Does WordPress support Arabic?
Sure, WordPress supports more than 70 international languages. Among these languages, the Arabic language is fully supported by WordPress, whether the interface, the control panel, or most of the plugins and templates.
✅ Is WordPress difficult?
No, WordPress is very powerful but despite that it is also easy to use and you don't need to be a programmer to be able to use it.
✅ Is WordPress only used to create blogs?
Absolutely not, WordPress is very powerful and you can create any website you want using WordPress. Whether this site is a blog, an online store, a forum, or even a social networking site.
The most notable proof of this is that the Dean of Hosting website works with WordPress and is not a blog.