Learn WordPress Part 2: WordPress Basics

What Types of Blogs Can You Build on WordPress?

  • Personal: a blog as a personal journal or diary
  • Business: a blogger that promotes a company’s business services, products on the internet, or both. Great for marketing a business that has a location and provides services.
  • Media/Journalism: a blog that provides information on current events, politics, etc. to its readers. This can be for informational or entertainment purposes.
  • Professional: a blogger paid to blog for individual companies or websites. These services match advertisers with bloggers so you can get paid through ads on your posts. You can ghost write posts for an array of business.

The Basics of WordPress Technologies

WordPress is a software and publishing system that uses PHP coding language and MySQL database language platform. It will provide you everything you need to create a website dynamically with its graphical user interface (GUI) or dashboard.

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor which stands for Personal Home Page, was created as a scripting language to create dynamic web pages. The server processes the PHP commands and compiles the website in the browser.

MySQL: is an open source database management system that uses Structured Query Language (SQL) for saving data.

When you look for a hosting service for the wordpress.org software, choose one that provides daily backups of your website so you will not lose any of your content in the event of website/server failure.

Note: WordPress allows for user comments and trackbacks (also called pingbacks). These features can be turned on or off and can help you interact with your audience and see what content you have created is being shared on other blogs.

Dealing with Spam: Use tools and plugins like Akismet to kill spam on your blog.

Using WordPress as a Content Management System

What is a CMS? A platform that gives you the ability to run a full website on your domain. This allows you to host a blog as well as create pages that have additional features built into the website that have nothing to do with blog content.

What is the difference between a website and a blog?

A website and a blog are two different things, though many websites have their own blogs. While a website can contain a blog, a blog by itself isn’t a full website. While WordPress is an amazing platform for blogging, there are other solutions for hobby bloggers that are simple to use, free, and easier to learn. Those options include blogger.com, google sites, and wix.com

Blog: a chronological display of content, posts or articles written by the blog author.

Website: a collection of published pages and sections that offer the visitor a variety of experiences and information.

Common Website Sections or Pages:

  • Photo Galleries
  • E-commerce Store
  • Discussion Forums
  • Social Community
  • Portfolio of Word
  • Feedback Forms
  • Contact Forms
  • Static Pages: Bio, FAQ, or Service pages

Final Note on WordPress Basics

Take a moment to look at your website plans and organize your ideas. From there, you can begin to understand what you are setting out to create and will be able to do so with better accuracy and speed. The better organized you are, the easier the website will be to create.

What’s Next?

Setup your website host

Register your domain name

Install WordPress and Login as an Admin