WordPress is simply the world’s most popular content management system. Top organisations, local or international, across various industries, such as media, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, bloggers, developers, freelancers and many more, all rely on this highly, flexible open-source software, to keep their online presence going.
Some of the world’s most popular sites were built with wordpress – The Punch, Facebook Blog, New York Times, TechCrunch, BBC America and many more. According to websitesetup.org, wordpress has over 20 million active sites, with over 300,000 of them among the top one million sites in the world.
WordPress comes in two variants; first is wordpress.com and the second is wordpress.org. The former is hosted on your behalf by Automattic Inc. which was founded by Matt Mullenweg , while you are expected to host the latter with your preferred host. My focus today, however, is on the self-hosted option only.
That said, I believe that one major reason why wordpress has done exceptionally well, is because, it is an open source software, meaning that you are free to use and modify it according to requirements and, of course, distribute as pleased.
The wordpress community is made up of a growing number of highly passionate professionals, ranging from hard-core developers, user interface experts, graphic designers, social media experts, etc., all bound by a common goal to keep improving the world’s most popular CMS.
Based on research results by w3techs.com, “wordpress is used by 59.4 per cent of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 28.5 per cent of all websites. If you are someone who loves to crunch data, then you will agree that these are some serious numbers.”
However, just because wordpress is free, does not mean you should not take it seriously. I say this because it is often said that people do not value free things. I will like to share a few steps that I believe you should take during the process of setting up your own wordpress platform.
WordPress can be setup by anyone, i.e., you do not have to be an expert to understand how the software really works. Note, however, that some higher level of tweaking might be required to make it a more professional website. Let’s get started:
- Draw up a plan
Planning is essential for the success of any venture, so it is important to start by drawing up a plan for your blog. What niche/industry would you like to cover? What audience do you wish to target? Would your blog be for leisure, business or a cause? — Finish Reading on the Punch
