WordPress For Dummies, 7th Edition

Introduction

It was 2003 when I discovered the WordPress blogging software. Way back then (and in Internet years, that’s actually quite a lot of time) I used Movable Type as my blogging platform. My friend Chelle introduced me to the WordPress software. “Try it,” she said. “You’ll really like it.”

As a creature of habit, I felt reluctant to make the change. But I haven’t looked back. I’ve been with WordPress ever since.

WordPress started out a tool for blogging. Authors, students, parents, business owners, academics, journalists, hobbyists — you name it — use blogs as a matter of course. Over the past decade, WordPress has emerged as the premier content management system available on the Internet today. WordPress software currently powers 25 percent of the websites you see on the World Wide Web — that means 1 in every 4 websites you run across are powered by WordPress.

Today, WordPress is so much more than a blogging tool. Individuals, organizations, and corporations are using WordPress to build their entire web presence. WordPress has grown into a valuable solution for everything from selling products on the Internet to membership sites, blogging, media — pretty much anything you think you can do with your website can be accomplished with WordPress.

To a brand-new user, some aspects of WordPress can seem a little bit intimidating. After you take a look under the hood, however, you begin to realize how intuitive, friendly, and extensible the software is.

This book presents an ...