WordPress: Hello world

The events department in my school recently approached me about how better to communicate with students and parents regarding our yearly ‘School Without Walls’ week. I did not have to think twice about it and quickly recommended creating a website using WordPress. I had already registered a student website through Bluehost so adding a sub-domain to the existing site was easy. From start to finish, it took me approximately 2 weeks to complete the site. You can see the completed project here.

After the project, it occurred to me that I am such a fan of WordPress but I do not show it as much as I should. So this article is dedicated to my passion for WordPress. WordPress turned 10 this year and has become one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in the world. WordPress is a free and Open Source blogging and publishing platform and is powered by PHP and MySQL. It is licensed under the GNU GPLv2 licence (refer to my previous article for further info).

WordPress is currently used by over 15% of top 1 million websites and is the power behind 22% of all new websites. It is popular for a reason. Unlike other blogging platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr, Live Journal, Movable Type and Type pad, WordPress allows you to install the software on your website and transfer data from one WordPress site to another very easily. Although a blogging platform, some themes that have been designed for WordPress can easily make you forget that you are viewing a blog.

Please refer to the presentation below for further information on why I think WordPress is popular. (Note: Please refer to the slide notes for further information, which can be viewed from the slideshare website)

[slideshare id=29137195&w=476&h=400&fb=0&mw=0&mh=0&sc=no]