Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your recipe site to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee and a number of other important freedoms.
Prior to version 3, WordPress supported one blog per installation, although multiple concurrent copies may be run from different directories if configured to use separate database tables. WordPress Multisites (previously referred to as WordPress Multi-User, WordPress MU, or WPMU) was a fork of WordPress created to allow multiple blogs to exist within one installation but is able to be administered by a centralized maintainer. WordPress MU makes it possible for those with websites to host their own blogging communities, as well as control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. WordPress MS adds eight new data tables for each blog.
Often beginners ask us: Why should I use WordPress? Isn’t my old site good enough? Why do I need to switch to WordPress? If you’re asking these questions, then you’re at the right place. In this article, we have compiled a few reasons why you should use WordPress, in what ways you can use WordPress, and who is using WordPress.
– When I start using new software or a new application, I find it’s useful to start with a clean slate. Throw out all my preconceptions and ideas, and assume I know nothing about the application, and that everything is new to me. And the first question I ask is always the same, “What is this?” or in our case, “What is wordpress?” Because of the history of wp, this question is crucial. WordPress is often perceived as being a simple blogging application, but in reality it’s so much more.
wp powers a full 43% of all websites online today, and one in every four new websites created runs WordPress. Suffice it to say, WordPress is a popular web-creation tool. To give you an idea of just how diverse the WordPress universe really is, let’s take a look at some sites currently running WordPress. To see a list of these sites, and other sites running WordPress, you can go to wordpress.org/showcase.
WordPress is developed with security in mind, so it is considered quite safe and secure to run any website. However, just like the real world, the internet can be an uncertain place.
This article gives a great overview on the monetary costs to run a WordPress site and on why and how WordPress as a software can be used free of charge. There is, however, a “hidden” cost implied in running a WordPress powered site successfully, and that would be the gaining of knowledge (resp. the time and energy required to gain knowledge). As with all great tools, WordPress won’t do the magic for you alone. You will have to learn how to use it right. Which themes and plugins are safe to use and abide the WordPress Coding Standards, so they won’t mess up your installation? How to test new plugins to make sure they behave well? (Ever tried WP_DEBUG true in a test environment?) How to backup your site and restore it from a backup if something went wrong. All of that could be named a cost, too, because in order to succeed you will either have to do it yourself, or hire an expert (or service) to do it for you.
