Building Web Apps with WordPress, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. WordPress Basics

WordPress was first developed in 2003 and was created primarily as blogging software. By the release of version 3.5, the image of WordPress had changed from blogging software to a versatile CMS and the word “blog” was actually removed from the description of the software and most places in the source code. Today, WordPress has evolved to become the largest platform on the web and is used on about 30% of all websites on the internet. This is pretty amazing if you think about it. More than a half a billion internet websites run on top of WordPress.

WordPress has gained so much popularity over the years for a couple of reasons. The first is that WordPress is open source software and has an entire community of people invested in improving it and continually contributing new code to extend its functionality. WordPress users, developers, and designers are always thinking of new creative ways to use WordPress and creating plugins for these new features, which can be made available to the community.

Another reason that WordPress has been so successful is the fact that it’s an extremely flexible CMS laced with hooks and filters so plugin and theme developers can have almost total control to build all different kinds of websites. Developers are constantly exploring innovative new ways to use the software, including building web and mobile applications, which is the focus of this book. The use of hooks and filters is covered later in this chapter.

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