Best WordPress Themes, Please checkout our free and premium best WordPress themes. These templates can be easily customized and have their own premium look and feel. WordPress is arguably the best and the most preferred CMS platform on the web. Because of its popularity, themes that are specially made for sites powered by WordPress also gained some good fame in the market. Best WordPress themes is easy and painless to setup and can be used to create a websites like blog, personal, corporate and portfolio site. This is the reason why users love WordPress.
Most of the below themes include astonishing and finest features that will blow your mind. You can use the below themes for your project.
FEATURES AT A GLANCE:
1) Proven:
WordPress powers almost a quarter of new sites today. It is the Content management system of choice for more than two thirds of the top million sites making it the most popular on the web and is trusted by content publishers including CNN and NY Times.
2)Easy to use:
At the core of WordPress is a simple interface that is similar to the desktop publishing software that is in use today. There is no coding experience needed and the learning curve is often about as short as typing in your site’s WordPress URL and logging in.
3)Built for publishing:
WordPress makes sharing content and attracting readers to your site a breeze. WordPress is simply not a website but rather a content-publishing platform. With a single click you have a powerful megaphone to broadcast your message to the world.
4)Backed by community support:
WordPress is supported by a community of users who have already solved many of the toughest challenges to sharing information today.
5)Multisite:
WordPress can be extended to multi Site feature on demand base. You are able to develop and maintain multiple sites using single WordPress install
CONTENT IS KING:
1) Your entire workflow:
WordPress can take the place of your entire workflow from the initial draft to the time you hit publish - spelling, grammar, collaboration and wordpress review. There is no need for emails back and forth or expensive desktop software.
2) Beyond black and white:
Everything that makes web pages feel rich - pictures, videos, music, documents - can feel right at home in WordPress. There is a drag and drop file uploader that uses the latest technology to ensure your file makes it to the webpage each time, and there is a media browser to help you store, organize and find the files you are looking for, WordPress hosts the files that make your pages pop.
3) Distraction free writing:
Between Email, IMs, texts, Tweets and status updates we have many distractions today. Your publishing platform should not be one of them. While writing, WordPress literally fades away, allowing you to concentrate on your ideas themselves, not how you are getting them out there.
4) Never lose a word:
WordPress automatically saves your work as you type so you don’t have to worry if your computer crashes or you make a mistake.
5) Time travel:
WordPress lets you schedule your posts for sometime in the future or lets you backdate a post for sometime in the past so that you can write when it is convenient for you.
6) Publish anywhere:
WordPress has mobile applications for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Phone 7, even Web OS. Wherever you are, control of your site is at your fingertips. You can also post to your site by email.
7)Password Protection:
You can hide your individual posts from public by giving them passwords. You can also have private posts which can be seen only by their author.
8) Multi-paged posts:
If your post is too long, cut it up into pages, so your viewers will not have to scroll to the end of the world.
9) Save drafts:
save your unfinished articles, improve them later and publish when you are done.
10) Previewing posts:
Before you hit the publish button, you can preview the article you just wrote just to make sure if everything is the way you want it.
A SUPERCHARGED V8 UNDER THE HOOD:
1) The right tuxedo for any content:
your content deserves the best. The site should conform to your content. WordPress comes with a full theme system that makes designing the simplest site to the most complicated portal a piece of cake.
2) Obsessively organized:
It does not matter how much content there is. If your visitors cannot find it. WordPress organizes your content by day, month, year, WordPress author, category and any other way you can describe it.
3) Drag and Drop administration:
Ne degree in Computer science required. Most of what users see from the menus to the dynamic functionality on each page can be fully customized with simple drag-and-drop controls on the backend.
4) Multiple personalities:
Got a bunch of users? not a problem. WordPress lets you define different roles for different users - just like in real life - and lets you assign privileges accordingly.
USER TESTED, GEEK APPROVED:
1) Out-of-the-box power:
WordPress provides very good functionality out of the box and many times little customization is required to adapt the software for any use of yours. Other CMSs depend on you to install and configure a long list of add-ons just to get many of the features WordPress considers core and relies on developers to undertake significant coding efforts to provide the functionality you need.
2) It is your software:
How to install WordPress? WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server, in the wordpress tag cloud or in a shared hosting account. You have complete control. Unlike commercial software or third party hosted services you can be sure of being able to access and modify everything related to your site.
3)Template driven design:
WordPress uses templates to generate pages dynamically. You can control the presentation of content by editing the templates using your favorite text editor or IDE. Template tags make it easier to design the content and information displayed on your site.
A SERIOUS PLATFORM FOR SERIOUS CONTENT:
1)Enterprise ready:
any challenge the organization faces, chances are, someone else has already tackled it and provided the code free of charge. WordPress has been adapted to many enterprise environments and provides support for Active Directory authentication, user management, work-flow integration and scheduled backups among other enterprise centric features.
2) Maintenance is very simple:
installing and upgrading WordPress is a piece of cake. WordPress’s famous five minute install is the envy of the industry and with one click updates you will know you are using the best.
3)Trust but verify:
not everyone is evil, but keep those who are in check by limiting which html tags are kosher on your weblog. The default html tags allowed by WordPress are as sane choice to let people use html in their comments and posts, without compromising the safety of your data or server.
BROADCAST YOUR IDEAS:
1)Feeds:
The RSS 1.0. RSS 2.0 and ATOM specifications are fully supported by WordPress and just about any page on your site has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to. There is a feed for the latest posts, for WordPress categories, comments and for anything you want.
2) Inter-site communication:
WordPress comes ready for PingBack and TrackBack, two very useful ways of connecting to other sites and to enable them to do the same.
GROW YOUR COMMUNITY:
1) Community building:
WordPress is not the YMCA, but it does help build communities around sites, through the use of comments, trackbacks and pingbacks, helping you keep in touch with the audience and fostering friendship.
2) Spam protection:
WordPress comes with very robust tools like integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog, and there is a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further.
3)Full user registration:
WordPress has built-in user registration system that can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog.
4)Notification:
WordPress can keep you in the loop by sending you an email each time there is a new comment or a comment awaiting moderation.
LICENSE PLATFORM AND PHILOSOPHY:
-> License:
WordPress is licensed under the GPLv2 or later which guarantees users many freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program for any purpose
- The freedom to study how the program works and change it to make it do what you wish
- The freedom to redistribute.
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
-> Platform:
PHP (5.2.4 or newer) and MySQL (5.0.2 or newer) are needed. Recommended PHP 5.6 or greater and MySQL 5.6 or greater and mod_rewrite Apache module.
-> Philosophy: WordPress’s development is guided by a set of unwavering principles. They are:
- Work out of the box
- Design for the majority
- Decision not options
- Clean, Lean and Mean
- Strive for Simplicity
- Deadlines are not Arbitrary
- Be mindful of the Vocal minority
- The WordPress bill of Rights
WORDPRESS LICENSE:
-> WordPress licensing:
like most software, WordPress is distributed under a license which means there are certain things that you are legally permitted and not permitted to do with WordPress software and source code. WordPress is distributed under a license called the GNU General Public License, a very popular license in the open source industry.
-> About the GPL:
The GNU GPL is an open source license. Open source does not just mean that you can view the source code - it has political and philosophical implications as well. Open source or “Free Software” means you are free to modify and redistribute the source code under certain conditions. Free does not refer to the price but it refers to the freedom. The difference between the two meanings of free is often characterized as “Free as in speech vs free as in beer”. The GPL is free as in speech.
-> Why we choose the GPL:
The reasons for WordPress releasing under GPL are both practical and idealistic. WordPress was born of the freedom mentioned before.
INTRODUCTION TO BLOGGING:
-> WHAT IS A BLOG:
“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog”. This is a term used to describe websites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog websites has diary-type commentary and links to articles on other websites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to political and can focus on one narrow subject or a complete range of subjects.
Generally speaking, blogs tend to have a few things in common:
- A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often the articles are organized into categories.
- An Wodpress archive of older articles
- A way for people to leave comments about the articles
- A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
- One or more feeds like RSS, Atom or RDF files.
-> WHAT IS A BLOGGER:
A blogger is a person who owns or runs a blog or a person who maintains a blog. That is posting articles or new posts, information, sharing the most up to date news, opinions and case studies to name a few.
-> THE BLOG CONTENT:
Content is the essence for any website. Retail sites have a catalog of products. University sites have information about their campuses, curriculum and faculty. News sites show the latest stories. For a personal blog, you might have bunch of observations or reviews.
-> COMMENTS:
It is always better if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site. With blogs they can. Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs. Most
Most blogs have a way to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog. They are called “pingbacks” or “ trackbacks”, they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles.
-> THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BLOG AND CMS:
Software that provides a method of managing your website is called a CMS (Content Management System). Many blogging software platforms are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features needed to create and maintain a blog site and can make publishing on the internet as simple as writing an article, giving it a title and organizing it under a categories.
In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write and the blogging tools takes care of the rest of the site management.
WordPress is one such advanced blogging tool and it provides a rich set of features. Through its administration panels you can set options for the behaviour and presentation of your blog. Via these Administration panels, you can easily compose a blog post, push a button and be published on the internet instantly.
-> THINGS BLOGGERS NEED TO KNOW:
There are some terms and concepts bloggers need to know.
1) Archives: A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on dates. The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific category.
2) Feeds: A feed is a function of special software that allows “Feed Readers” to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and the hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS, Atom or RDF files.
3) Blogrolls: A blogroll is a list of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links on a blogroll are normally links to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a “sidebar” on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page.
4) Syndication: A feed is a machine readable (normally XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many blogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on). There are tools out there that call themselves “Feed readers”. They keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated and when they are updated they display the new post and a link to it with a excerpt of the post. All you have to do with the feed readers is to add the link to the WordPress RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feed readers will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these “Syndication” feeds available for the readers to use.
-> MANAGING COMMENTS:
One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment on article posts, link to your posts, and comment on and recommend them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks.
1) Trackbacks: In a nutshell, trackback was designed to provide a method of notification between websites. It is a method of person A saying to person B, “This is something you may be interested in”. To do that, person A sends a Trackback ping to person B.
A better explanation is this:
-> Person A writes something on their blog.
-> Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog.
-> Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog
-> Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment has a link to Person B’s post.
2) Pingbacks: For example. Yvonne writes an article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne’s article and comments about it, linking back to Yvonne’s original post. Using pingback, Kathleen’s software can automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to and Yvonne’s software can then include this information o on her site.
The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:
-> Person A posts something on his blog.
-> Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A’s post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
-> Person A’s blog receives the ping back, then automatically goes to Person B’s post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.
3) Using pingbacks & trackbacks:
Comments on blogs are many times criticized as lacking authority, because anyone can post anything using any name they like. There is no verification process to ensure their authenticity. So Trackbacks and pingbacks provide some verification to blog commenting.
To enable trackbacks and pingbacks in the Discussion Settings of your Administration Panels, select these items under “Default Article settings”.
Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article.
Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)
Selecting one option and not the other would not be very good.
Once enabled, trackbacks and pingbacks from other sites will appear in your Administration panels just like other comments, but on your post pages, they will appear according to your theme’s design.
-> COMMENT MODERATION:
This is a features which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the various article posts, and can help in tracking spam.
-> COMMENT SPAM:
This refers to useless comments to posts on a blog. These are irrelevant to the context of the post. They usually contain one or more links to other websites or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get a higher pagerank for their domains in Google, so that they can sell those domains at a higher price in the future or to obtain high ranking in search results for an existing website.
-> PRETTY PERMALINKS:
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual web logs as well as categories and other lists of web logs postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article, or how you might send a link to your story in an email message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article should not change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent.
-> BLOG BY EMAIL:
Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. WordPress offers this cool feature.
-> POST SLUGS:
If you are using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. In WordPress you can change the Post Slug to something else which sounds better.
-> EXCERPT:
Excerpts are summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in different ways. In WordPress, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post or generated automatically by using the first few paras of a post or using the post up to a specific point assigned by you.
-> PLUGINS:
Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features that either enhance the already existing features or add them to your site. WordPress offers simple ways of adding Plugins to your blog.
-> BASICS - A FEW BLOGGING TIPS:
It is tough to start a blog and this puts off many people. Some start but become quickly discouraged because of the lack of comments. You may want to standout from the crowd of millions of bloggers. You may want people to visit and comment your blog. Follow these simple tips that help you achieve all that you wanted.
1) Post regularly
2) Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.
3) Don’t put “subscribe” and “vote me” links all over the front page.
4) Use a clean and simple themes where and when possible.
5) Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other people’s blogs.
6) There are no rules to what you post on the blog, so have fun blogging.
WHAT IS WORDPRESS:
(Source: https://ithemes.com/tutorials/what-is-wordpress/)
WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. But in non-geek terms, it is perhaps the most easiest and powerful blogging and website Content Management System (CMC) in existence today. WordPress is a publishing software with a focus on ease of use, speed and a great user experience. WordPress is blessed with an active community, which is the heart of open source software.
JUST GETTING STARTED WITH WORDPRESS:
Our hand book for beginners gives an introduction to WordPress, which is a stunning open-source platform. One can learn the advantages of using WordPress, and the step by step instructions for getting accustomed to the WordPress Dashboard. Then you can learn about the WordPress plugins and best themes, how to create your page or post and optimize your site for search engines.
WHO USES WORDPRESS:
Many popular blogs, news outlets, music sites and Fortune 500 companies are using WordPress. For example, popular blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch, use WordPress. Then there are News outlets like The New York Times’ blogs and CNN on-air personality blogs who use WordPress too.
And if you are interested to know who uses WordPress, visit “https://wordpress.org/showcase/” and you will be impressed and even surprised by the number of well known sites and popular people using WordPress to power up their websites.
HOW DO I GET STARTED USING WORDPRESS:
WordPress is 100 percent free. WordPress can be downloaded for self-hosted installations from WordPress.org or it can also be used as hosted service via WordPress.com.
MANAGING A WORDPRESS SITE:
It is quite easy to start a website with WordPress. There are certain things that need to be considered like hosting, installation, themes and content management.
-> WordPress hosting:
WordPress is a low maintenance script that any LAMP host could support. Yet one is advised caution in looking for a good quality provider that understands the needs and dynamics of this software and also charges only a reasonable fee. The SiteGround has specialized in hosting WordPress since its starting and is hosting thousands of sites made on it.
-> WordPress installations:
If you happen to using SiteGround hosting, WordPress will be installed for free. If you want to install it yourself then there is a Softaculous script installer that will auto-install this CMS very soon. You can also refer to the WordPress tutorial https://wordpress.org/ and wordpress wiki for step by step installation instructions.
-> WordPress tutorial:
Understanding and managing WordPress is not that difficult. But there are some tweaks that might not come so easily for you. Hence there is an all-inclusive tutorial that covers most of the common management how-to tricks.
->WordPress themes:
The look and feel of your website is important because it determines your conversions and revenue flow. With that in mind there is the free WordPress themes to make your site stand out.
WHY SHOULD YOU USE WORDPRESS:
People quite often make the mistake of classifying WordPress as only a blogging platform. That was the case in the past. But now WordPress is a versatile Content Management System (CMS). It has evolved over the years. Now apart from creating blogs one can also create website and mobile apps. The best thing about WordPress is that it is easy and flexible to use.
According to a survey, WordPress powers 22.5 percent of the websites on the internet. Many of the top brands like Time Magazine, Google, Facebook, Sony, Disney, LinkedIn and many more use WordPress to power their websites.
-> WordPress is free:
WordPress is a free software which means that you can download, install, use and modify it at your will. Open source means that the source code can be studied, modified, and played with. You can download, install and use any of the 2600 plus WordPress templates and 31000 Plus plugins.
To run WordPress, all that you need is domain and webhosting. Because WordPress is open source, it is a community software. It is maintained by a large group of volunteers most of whom are WordPress consultants whose interests are growing and maintaining WordPress.
Also anyone can contribute to WordPress by writing patches, answering support questions, writing plugins, creating themes, translating WordPress and updating Documentation. By using WordPress you become part of the community. You get free support from other community members, download WordPress free plugins and themes and after getting some experience you can also contribute to the community.
->Wordpress is easy to use and learn:
WordPress is used by millions of people. New people are joining the WordPress community each passing day. WordPress is relatively easy to use and that’s why people quickly adapt to WordPress. If you need help in setting up your WordPress site then our talented staff are dependable.
-> WordPress is Extendable by using themes and plugins:
Most of the people who use WordPress are not web designers nor programmers. They do not have any knowledge of designing websites. There are thousands of free templates to choose from so you can give your website any look that you want. This is why WordPress is an ideal candidate.
There is a perfect and free WordPress theme available for any website. Whether it is for photography theme, magazine theme, portfolio theme or an eCommerce theme. Best WordPress themes free are easy to customize because a lot of them come with their own options panel allowing you to change colors, upload logo, change background, create beautiful sliders and do some amazing things with your website without having any knowledge about the code. WordPress can be extended by using plugins. There are thousands of free plugins available for you. They add extra functionality and add a whole new platform to your WordPress sites.
-> WordPress is search engine friendly:
WordPress produces semantic markup which makes your site very attractive to search engines. WordPress is written using standard compliance high quality code. WordPress is SEO friendly by design and it can be made more SEO friendly.
-> WordPress is easy to manage:
One can update the plugins and themes from within the WordPress admin dashboard. This is made possible because WordPress comes with built in updater. When there is a new version of WordPress available the updater notifies you. We can update it by just clicking a button.
-> WordPress is safe and secure:
It is safe to run WordPress on any website because WordPress is developed with security in mind. However the internet can be an uncertain place.
-> WordPress can handle different medial types:
You are not just limited to writing text using WordPress. WordPress comes with built in support to handle wordpress image gallery, audio and video content. You can embed YouTube videos, instagram photos, Tweets and Soundcloud audio by pasting the URL in your post. All this is made possible because WordPress supports Embed enabled websites.
-> Ways to use WordPress:
WordPress can be used in many different ways. Our site is not just a blog, it is more of a resource website and it is being run on WordPress. WordPress can be used as the following:
- Arcade
- Blog
- Content management system
- WordPress Gallery
- Portfolio
- Rating website
- Shopping store
- Video collection site
- Membership site
The above are just a few examples of how WordPress can be used. To see and learn how other top businesses are using WordPress visit “https://wordpress.org/showcase/”.
WHY IS WORDPRESS FREE? WHAT ARE THE COSTS? WHAT IS THE CATCH?
WordPress is an open source software. It is free in the sense of freedom not in the sense of free beer. You might ask what is the difference between the two? Open source software comes with freedom to use, modify, build and redistribute the software in any way you like. But there might be costs involved somewhere. We will discuss the cost of using the open source WordPress software later in this article.
WHY DON’T THEY SELL WORDPRESS AS A SOFTWARE?
People often ask why the people and companies behind WordPress sell it? This statement would make sense if a single company or individual owned WordPress.
WordPress is an open source community project where thousands of talented people made contributions to make it into what it is today. There is a core team of developers that lead the project development. However anyone can contribute to this development like contributing patches, report bugs, suggest features etc. But to become the core contributor of WordPress you have to be involved in the community.
The philosophy behind open source software is that software are not like other tangible products. Once software is created it can be copied many times with little cost. For example consider a toy factory. Each toy manufactured has different parts and each part has a cost. The manufacturing cost of these parts can be calculated by the factory to decide a reasonable profit margin for the product.
On the other hand the cost of creating a software and making copies of it is not the same. Some People believe that with each copy sold, the profit margin of the software becomes more unfair.
HOW DO PEOPLE MAKE MONEY WITH WORDPRESS:
The two main profitable parts of any open source software are products and services based on the same open source software. WordPress is a free blogging platform.
Matt Mullenweg, co-founder developer of WordPress, launched a company called Automattic that provides “restricted” free blog hosting service at WordPress.com (“https://wordpress.com/”), and you can pay/upgrade to unlock features like CSS modification stc. But to get the full power of WordPress.org on WP.com service, you have to spend over $3250 per month for hosting.
IS WORDPRESS COPYRIGHT FREE?
No, WordPress copyright is not free. Everyone can use it but each contribution made to the software is copyrighted. It is released under GPL which means that you are free to use, modify and redistribute the code. GPL requires that any derivative work you release or distribute should be licensed under GPL as well. So while you may have the copyright to do anything you like, your derivative work automatically inherits the GPL license so others are free to use, modify and redistribute your code in anyway they choose.
DOES THIS MEAN THAT ALL PREMIUM WORDPRESS THEMES AND PLUGINS ARE LICENSED GPL?
According to an official blog post on WordPress.org, themes are GPL too ( visit “https://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/”). Images, CSS and Javascript used inside themes and plugins can be excluded, but all PHP and HTML parts of themes and plugins extensively use WordPress functionality thus they are a derivative work therefore are licensed under GPL.
However some people do not agree with that, most trusted WordPress businesses follow and abide by the community guidelines.
THE CONTENT PUBLISHED WITH WORDPRESS ALSO INHERITS GPL?
No, you are entitled to license your content anyway you like. Unless the content you are publishing is actually a derivative work of WordPress or any other GPL licensed work. For instance, if you are sharing art work on your blog, then you own full copyrights of it. But if you are writing a blog post showing people how to use WordPress function with examples, then that blog post could be licensed differently. The code used in examples is actually derivative work and automatically inherits the GPL license.
WORDPRESS TRADEMARK:
The code of WordPress as a software in released under GPL but the words WordPress, WordCamp and the WordPress logo are registered trademarks owned by WordPress Foundation ( visit “http://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/”). To distinguish between a site or resource that is officially or community run, the foundation asks folks to not use “WordPress” in their domain name.
Any site, training course, or resource that you run across that has WordPress in their domain name is probably being run by someone who does not know enough about WordPress.
COST OF USING WORDPRESS:
WordPress is free to download and use. However, to use WordPress on the web, you need WordPress Hosting. You can use WordPress.com to create a free blog, but be aware that there are some differences - WordPress vs. WordPress.com [infographic]. The cost of using WordPress is relatively minimal and hold true for running any other type of website as well. The only real cost is web hosting and domain.
Additional costs would be commercial WordPress themes. But there are over 4000 plus free WordPress templates (visit “https://wordpress.org/themes/”) that you can use. Also many people use commercial plugins but there is no need for it as there are 45000 free WordPress plugins (visit “https://wordpress.org/plugins/”).
So now the question is why do people buy paid themes or plugins. To get a little more exclusive design and feel for the site, people often purchase a commercial “premium” theme. Another reason to purchase a paid theme or plugin is for getting support. Free theme or plugin providers are not required to offer support or updates because it is usually their passion project. But paid plugin and theme shops offer regular support because it is their business.
THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS WORDPRESS IS A GREAT CHOICE FOR BUILDING YOUR BLOG OR BUSINESS WEBSITE:
1) WordPress is an open source. It means that there are hundreds of people around the world working on improving WordPress. And it is totally free because it is open source.
2) It is user friendly. You do not need to hire a web designer or a webmaster every time you want to make any change to your website. You can easily manage and update your own content without needing to learn HTML.
3) It is flexible and extensible. There are thousands of themes and plugins that enable you to easily change the look and feel of your website with only a few clicks.
4) If you happen to run into problems or if you want to add some WordPress custom fields features, it is easy to find support or hire someone who can help you. There are many WordPress tutorials on the web and there are thousands of WordPress developers and designers to bail you out. Then there is the official WordPress Forum (visit “https://wordpress.org/support/”) for you to get answers to your questions.
5) WordPress is SEO-friendly. Right out of the box, WordPress includes all that you need to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines. This is critical to your site’s visibility and online success. Matt Cutts of Google says, “WordPress is made to do SEO well”.
6) You are in control of your own content. Other publishing platforms limit what you can do and can’t do on your own website. And you are locked into that service. Your content will simply disappear if it should ever shut down. But with WordPress, you can import your data from systems like Blogger or Tumblr. And you can also export your data to move away from WordPress, incase you choose. Hence you are in control of your site and your content.
IS WORDPRESS RIGHT FOR YOU?
If you are looking for an easy tool that helps you build your own blog or a website without learning complicated HTML, WordPress is the right choice for you. You will also realise that WordPress is very flexible, with thousands of themes, plugins and support options.
HOW TO START A WORDPRESS BLOG STEP BY STEP?
-> What do you need to start a WordPress blog?
There are three steps to start a WordPress blog:
- A domain name idea.
- A web hosting account (this is where your website live on the internet)
- Your undivided attention for thirty minutes.
How to start a blog website?
Step 1) Setup:
The biggest mistake beginners make when starting a blog is choosing the wrong blogging platform. For 95 percent of users, it makes more sense to use WordPress org also known as self-hosted WordPress. Why? Because it is free to use, you can install plugins, customize your site design and most importantly make money from your site without any restrictions (see the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
You might be wondering why it is free? What is the catch? There is no catch. It is free because you have to do the setup and host it yourself. In other words, you need a domain name and web hosting. A domain name is what people type to get to your website. It is your web address on the internet. Like Google.com. Web hosting is where your website live. It is your website’s house on the internet. Every website needs web hosting. A domain name typically costs $14.99 per year and web hosting normally costs $7.99 per month. That’s a lot for beginners who are just starting out.
Thankfully, Bluehost (visit “https://www.bluehost.com/special/wordpress”) an official WordPress recommended hosting provider, has agreed to offer our users free domain name and over 60 percent off on web hosting. Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosting companies, started in 1996. They are also the largest brand name when it comes to WordPress hosting because they host millions of websites including our own. On top of all this, Bluehost has been working with WordPress since 2005 and they are committed to giving back.
Note: At WPBeginner we believe in transparency. If you signup with Bluehost using our referral link, we will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you (in fact you will save money and get a free domain). We would get this commission for recommending just about any free WordPress hosting company but we only recommend products that we use personally and believe will add value to our readers. Let us go ahead and purchase your domain + hosting.
Open up Bluehost (visit “https://www.bluehost.com/special/wordpress”) in a new window and follow along. The first thing you need to do is click on the green “get started now” button to get started.
On the next screen, select the plan that you need (basic and plus are the most popular). After that you will be asked to enter the domain name for your website. Lastly you will need to add your account information and finalize the package info to complete the process. On this screen, you will see the optional extras that you can purchase. It is entirely up to you whether or not you purchase these, but we generally do not recommend purchasing these. You can always add them later on.
Once completed, you will receive an email with details on how to login to your web hosting control panel (cPanel). This is where you manage everything from support, emails among other things.
But most importantly this is where you install WordPress.
Step 2) Install WordPress:
In the cPanel, you can see many small icons for various services and features. This is overwhelming initially, so ignore 95 percent of them because you will never use them. Scroll down to the website section and click on the WordPress icon. You will be redirected to the Bluehost Marketplace Quick installation screen for WordPress. Here click on the get started button. On the next screen you will have to select the domain name. Choose the domain name from the drop down and select next.
Now you have to enter your site name, username and a WordPress password for your site. Also check all the checkboxes and click on install.
The Quick Install will start installing WordPress. In the next step we will show you how to get free WordPress themes. Once WordPress is installed, you can see the success notice in the top header bar.
Here click on the Installation complete link. Now it will take you to the screen with your WordPress login URL and password.
Congratulations, you have created your WordPress site. That wasn’t too bad right. Your WordPress login URL will look like this:
-> http://yoursite.com/wp-admin
Now click on the WordPress login link to login to your dashboard.
Now in the nextstep, we are ready to customize your site’s appearance and also start blogging.
Step 3) Selecting your WordPress theme:
The appearance of your WordPress blog is determined by the themes. When you first visit your blog it is not very appealing to the people.
You have to customize the look and feel of your blog to attract visitors.
What is a WordPress theme? There are thousands of free and best WordPress themes that you can install on your site. To change your theme you can go to your WordPress dashboard and clicking Appearance -> themes.
Click on the Add New button. On the next screen you will have access to 4100 free Word Press themes in the official WordPress com themes directory. When you have finalized a theme, bring your mouse over it and click on the install button. After installing it, you need to click on the activate button. After installation of your theme, you can customize it (under the appearance wordpress menu, there is a customize link).
Now you are ready to create your first blog post.
Step 4) Creating your first blog post:
To write your blog post, click on Posts -> Add New menu in your Word Press dashboard. You can find an editor area where you can write your blog post. After writing if you want to publish it, just select the Publish button.
On the posts screen, you will notice many other sections like Categories and WordPress Tags. You can use them to organize your posts.
Step 5) Plugins and customization:
After writing the blog post, and adding wordpress blog themes you might want add the other usual elements like wordpress contact form, about page and more. To further customize WordPress and add features such as contact forms, galleries, sliders etc, you have to use WordPress plugins.
These plugins are apps that allow you to add new features to your wordpress website templates. There are around 46,000 WordPress plugins available. At wordpress.org, we have the best WordPress plugins to help you add the functionality for your blog.
Step 6) Mastering WordPress:
WORDPRESS is the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners. Our goal is to provide state of the art helpful WordPress tutorials that are easy to follow for businesses and non tech savvy WordPress website owners.
Refer(http://www.wpbeginner.com/start-a-wordpress-blog/)
If you want to know more about WordPress, then checkout:
-> WORDPRESS Dictionary - The best place for beginners to start and familiarize themselves with WordPress lingo.
-> WORDPRESS Videos - Watch these 23 videos to master WordPress.
-> WORDPRESS Blog - The place for all our WordPress tutorials.
You can also subscribe to WORDPRESS YouTube Channel where we regularly share video tutorials to help you learn WordPress.
And lastly, you can also use Google to type your question and add WORDPRESS in front of it so that you can get an answer to any WordPress questions that you may have.
14 SURPRISING STATISTICS ABOUT WORDPRESS USAGE:
It is a known fact that WordPress is by far the most prominent CMS in the world. It is a brainchild of Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, WordPress has risen to superstardom in just 11 years since its release. These 14 WordPress usage statistics may well give you a pause for thought.
1) 48 percent of all Technorati’s top 100 blogs are managed with WordPress.
When you consider that there is an huge amount of alternative CMS available, this statistic speaks volumes about WordPress popularity. The New York Times, CNN, Mashable and reBay all run on their blogs on the WordPress.
2) 74.6 Million sites depend on WordPress:
Yes that’s right. On an average, that is one site per person in Turkey. Around 50 percent of this figure is hosted on the free WordPress.com. In the realm of self-hosted sites, WordPress accounts for 18.9 percent of all websites.
3) WordPress - related keywords score 37 million searches per month.
The keyword “WordPress” alone receives over 450,000 searches each month. That is just “WordPress”, and not “WordPress help” or “WordPress plugins” or anything of that sort. Now when you count the searches of all the keywords with WordPress or WP in them, the monthly figure is a whopping 37 million searches.
4) 40 translations of WordPress:
While the actual number is not half so mind-boggling as the others you have just read, it is no less significant. Some of the languages that WP has been translated to are Croatian, Dutch, Estonian, French or Finnish etc. The WordPress team is actively updating their list with new language translations all the time.
5) 22 percent of all New U.S. registered domains run on WordPress:
That means that out of every 100 domains registered in the U.S., 22 of them will be run on WordPress. Considering that an average of 120,000 domains are registered worldwide per day, it is safe that WordPress is growing by leaps and bounds.
6) WordPress.com gets more unique visitors than Amazon (US):
WordPress.com records an stunning 126 million unique visitors per month, while Amazon falls quite a ways behind at 96 million unique visitors per month.
7) WordPress.com employs only 229 people:
Yes that is true. The site that receives 130 percent the unique visits of Amazon employs only 229 people. To keep that in perspective, Amazon.com employs 88,400 people to run their business, 38,603 percent more than WordPress.com.
8) Six new WordPress.com posts every second:
Yes you read it right. Every second, around six new wordpress post are published on WordPress bloginfo. That means that there are 342 posts per minute. And 20,000 per day. And a grand total of 7.49 million annually. Not only is WordPress.org the world’s most popular self-hosted CMS solution, but free version is also second in popularity on the list of free blogging platforms, with Google’s own Blogger topping it.
9) WordPress Developers charge $50 per hour:
A 2012 survey revealed that the average rate for a WordPress project clocks in at $50 per hour. It is nothing to write home about, but $50 per hour is a decent sum for most. oDesk, one of the most popular outsourcing sites in the world, lists WordPress development as fifth most-requested skill. Freelancer.com, a similar website, has thus far recorded over $3.5 million in revenue for WordPress developers.
10) 29,000 WordPress plugins and growing everyday:
Without doubt, the number one feature that sets WordPress apart from any wordpress CMS is their plugins. These plugins extend and capitalize on the functionality of WordPress- removing access to them would cripple WordPress users (and that is one of the reasons why WordPress.com falls second to Blogger). Fortunately, nothing of that sort is happening. As a matter of fact, WordPress.org database of plugins has recently hit 29 thousand and a new one is added every hour.
11) 98 versions of WordPress to date:
There might only be 229 employees, but those 229 sure kept on their toes. Major updates are rolled out once every few weeks. Plus, the WordPress.com source code is updated 60 to 80 times per day, pushed out many times througout the day. These changes are synced with the WortdPress.org platform daily.
12) 46 million Downloads of WordPress.org:
The free WordPress.org platform that supports self-hosted websites has been downloaded 46 million times up till July of 2013, which approximates to 100 downloads every day since 2003. You might not have downloaded WordPress and uploaded it to your FTP manager yourself, but when you installed it using Fantastico or the much loved 1-Click, it was counted as a download.
13) WordPress is the most popular with business websites:
Of the top ten lakh sites in the world, the number of business sites (most popular with WordPress) powered by WordPress is five times the number of WordPress-managed news sites (least popular with WordPress). This statistic is not all that surprising because the online marketing circles will often discuss WordPress more than any other CMS out there. WordPress also ranks high as one of the most bogged topics in the online marketing niche and nearly all its keywords have very high PPC competition.
14) Akismet is the most popular plugin:
Of all the 19 thousand free plugins available for download, Akismet has received the most downloads. That main reason for this is that Akismet comes auto-installed with the newer versions of WordPress. Akismet has been downloaded a total of 18 million times, a truly remarkable figure. The spam protection plugin alone has been responsible for close to 0.06 percent of all plugin downloads at WordPress.org.