What is WordPress and How does it Work?

WordPress

is marketed as a platform for building dynamic website solutions. Dynamic simply means that data is live on the website while users are  interacting on the site. So a website owner can add content (pages, post, images) live without affecting existing viewers. Content is stored in a database, which allows for the dynamic feel of a WordPress site. A website can start off as a single page and grow over time. In a short time, you can have multiple pages and many post without becoming overwhelming. The best example is any news site like CNN.

Posting with WordPress

Every day, the site owner posts a news article and their home page is updated with that latest article. This is being dynamic. Prior to this method, a website administrator would need to take the site owners news article and update the website page with the change.  This would need to be done every time there needs to be a change. This would remove the prior content on the site. The editor or writer can now write and email content to the site, and the article can be posted without the need for the site administrator. The old content will remain available for reference. This is a significant improvement from the previous process

Platform

The WordPress “platform” is simply a group of files written in PHP,  connected to a MySQL database and stored on an Apache web server. This grouping of files is a more advanced version of a simple html file from the “old” days of website development. The html files were considered static websites, as they were not usually connected to a database.

WordPress allows a website owner to construct a platform that can be build around any business need. For example, the same group of files can be configured to build a solution for a barber shop, can be altered to create a totally different website solution for a realtor for a real estate listing. Even more popular are website solutions that provide online food ordering and table reservations for restaurants.

Why WordPress

The possibilities are vast, with what can be imagined with a WordPress site. One thing any business owner can be certain of,  is the website solution is theirs. The files and the data collected in the database can be moved to another hosting provider with relative ease. Some sites offer a cheaper site expense per month, but the flexibility is very limited.  Additionally, you cant pickup your site and take it with you.

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