WordPress

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that powers more than 40% of all websites, making it the most popular solution of its kind in the world. It began as a blogging platform but grew into a universal tool for building company sites, portals, stores and content-driven applications.

How WordPress works

WordPress is written in PHP and uses a database to store content. Themes control a site's appearance, while plugins extend its functionality — from forms and galleries to advanced SEO tooling. Thanks to the block editor, content is created visually, without knowing any code, which lowers the barrier for non-technical people.

Ecosystem and uses

WordPress's huge popularity stems from its vast ecosystem: tens of thousands of plugins and themes, many hosting companies offering hosting optimised for this CMS, and a large community. WordPress also underpins WooCommerce, the most popular e-commerce platform for the system. The flip side of popularity is that WordPress is a frequent target of attacks, so regular updates of the core, themes and plugins, strong passwords and backups are essential. Performance depends on hosting quality and optimisation — caching, image compression and limiting the number of plugins. Ultimately a site's success on WordPress depends not on the CMS itself but on maintenance discipline: updates, security, optimisation and a thoughtful choice of plugins combine to produce a fast, stable site.