What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free and open-source web content management software (CMS) which anyone can download and install on their own server. Using WordPress, you can create blogs and websites ranging from a simple personal blog, a portfolio site, to a full-fledged eCommerce website, or a news magazine that serves billions of web pages per month.

According to W3Techs, as of 2021, more than 40% of the websites in this world are built using WordPress. That means every third website you visit on day to day basis is likely built using WordPress.

WordPress is built mainly PHP and JavaScript. It commonly uses MySQL for databases. As it’s a web application, it needs a web server and WordPress supports most of the web servers out there including Apache, NGINX, and Microsoft IIS.

These days, WordPress has also become a popular choice for “backend” in decoupled architecture where front-end is commonly developed using frameworks like GatsbyJS and Next.js.

Open Source

WordPress is released under the GPL v2 license. As a WordPress professional, this means, you can use WordPress in any way you like, including for commercial purposes. Also, you can modify it and even distribute your modified copy, and even charge for your modified copy as long as you provide these same freedoms to your users.

In our practical use, we should never modify core files of WordPress or for that matter any frameworks we use. Most frameworks, including WordPress, provide an API that allows developers like us to change it’s behaviour without altering any of its source files. We will learn about these capabilities in this course soon.

Getting Help 🆘

WordPress is free software, and there are thousands of volunteers working in the official support forum where you can post your questions and get help from theme and plugin developers, fellow WordPress users, and other volunteers.

There are also other places on the web like WordPress Development Stack Exchange and Advanced WordPress Facebook Group from where you can get WordPress support for free.

rtCamper developers can also request help in our Slack’s #engineering channel. But unless it’s urgent, it’s better to mingle with the community. Why limit yourself to the knowledge of 100 people when you have thousands of smart folks to help you.

When requesting help, you can follow the WPBeginner article on how to ask for help properly. Please remember that most people out there helping you are volunteers and they do not owe you anything. Be nice. Always!