WordPress® Bible, Second Edition

Chapter 1. Learning About WordPress

IN THIS CHAPTER

• A brief history of WordPress

• Leveraging the WordPress community

• WordPress by the numbers

• Ten things you need to know about WordPress

• Understanding open source and the General Public License

Long before Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press and the first printed Holy Bible was mass-produced, humans were instinctually creating content. Civilizations scribed their experiences and histories on scrolls and in massive tomes by hand. In some cases, it was little more than pictures on the walls of caves.

Though these processes were tedious, they filled the human need to articulate thoughts and pass stories on to the next generation. The printing press has enabled humans to evolve scribing to another level. Content can be passed on in many forms, such as in personal or commercial literature, and is widely accessible.

Today, via the Internet, humanity has taken content production to yet another level with blogging platforms and content management systems. WordPress, a project of this evolution, has emerged as a preferred platform for content production and continues to evolve to meet our ever-changing content needs. It provides a vehicle to pass down stories, accounts, and histories to this, and future, generations.

WordPress is free and easy to install, so anyone can use it without much effort. It's also open source, so developers can take the code, re-use it, and improve upon it.

A Brief History of WordPress

Back in the old days of Web publishing ...