What is WordPress? And How Does it Work? - Explained for Beginners

so you've heard about WordPress but you have no idea what it is how it works and whether you should use it to create a website in this video I'm going to explain everything for complete beginners to clear up any confusion we'll also cover the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org and how to actually create a WordPress website from scratch let's start with the question what is WordPress WordPress is basically a software to create and manage man websites this kind of software is also called a Content management system or CMS for short a Content management system allows you to create edit and publish content on your website using a simple interface so there's no need to write any code one of the main benefits of using Wordpress is that it's completely free to use WordPress is an open- Source platform meaning its source code is freely available for anyone to use modify and distribute this has led to a huge community of Wordpress developers designers and users making WordPress the most popular way to build websites with over 43% of all websites being run on WordPress because WordPress is so popular it has a huge ecosystem of website themes and plugins themes control the overall design and layout of your website allowing you to customize everything using a visual editor so you don't have to write any code to make changes currently there is over 30,000 WordPress themes with around 12,000 of them being completely free to use so whether you want to create a blog an e-commerce website or a portfolio you will find a theme that fits your needs now plugins are like apps for your WordPress website allowing you to add additional features and functionalities for example if you want to turn your website into an online store you can simply install the the woocommerce plugin which is completely free to use with currently over 60,000 plugins to choose from there are countless ways to add additional capabilities to your WordPress website now something that confuses almost everyone when learning about WordPress is that there are actually two versions wordpress.com and wordpress.org and not knowing the difference between these two can end up costing you a lot of money and here's why usually when people tell you that they have created their website using WordPress they are referring to wordpress.org wordpress.org is the website where you can download the open- source software that you need to create a WordPress website and you can download it completely for free this is the software you can simply install on a server and start your WordPress website wordpress.com on the other hand is essentially an all-in-one website building platform offering hosting domain names and their own themes Now using Wordpress through wordpress.com is not free they do have a free plan but it's extremely limited and you'll have to publish your website on a wordpress.com subdomain and to get access to the entire WordPress ecosystem with all of their themes and plugins you'd have to at least upgrade to the Creator plan at $40 per month or $300 per year so on their starter and Explorer plan you don't even get access to free WordPress plugins and themes in my opinion this is absolutely insane you shouldn't have to pay to get access to the WordPress ecosystem which would otherwise be available to anyone for free unfortunately many people don't know this so they hear WordPress and then they just go to wordpress.com sign up for a plan and then they end up having to pay $40 per month to get access to the free ecosystem of Wordpress this is why I don't recommend to use wordpress.com to create a WordPress website instead I recommend to choose a much more affordable hosting provider that allows you to install WordPress for free and gives you full access to the entire WordPress ecosystem with all the themes and plugins without forcing you to upgrade to an overpriced hosting plan you'll find a good hosting provider that I personally use and recommend in the video description where you can get WordPress hosting for as low as $3 per month including full access to Wordpress now let's quickly talk about why you would even want to create your website using WordPress compared to Simply using all-in-one website Builders like Wix or Squarespace providers like Wix and Squarespace are all in one website Builders including hosting themes a page builder and customer support their goal is to make creating a website as easy as possible so they handle all the technical parts of running a website for you this makes it a lot easier for a complete beginner to create a website because you don't need to worry about hosting connecting your domain name or keeping your website secure however it also comes with three main disadvantages first it's generally more expensive to use allinone website Builders like Wix and Squarespace compared to Wordpress second you don't really own your website so for example if Wix decides to increase their prices you can't really move your Wix website to another provider as it only works on Wix but if you have a WordPress website and your hosting provider decides to increase their hosting prices you can simply move your website to another hosting provider if you want to and third using providers like Wix limits your options of adding additional features to your website in the future Wix does have its own app and theme Market place but compared to the ecosystem of Wordpress it's quite limited now if you're not sure if you should use WordPress or an all-in-one website builder like Wix or Squarespace to create your website I've made an entire video to answer that question for you and I'll leave it up here in the cards or in the video description so how do you actually create a WordPress website to create a WordPress website we first need hosting which is the server where all of our website files will be stored this server is connected to the internet 24/7 so that your website will be accessible at all times there are many different hosting providers to choose from I've tried many of them and the one that I now use and recommend is called hostinger with hostinger you can get WordPress hosting for as low as $3 per month plus if you sign up using my referral link and enter the code Medics media you'll get an additional discount you'll find the link down below in the video description once we have our hosting we can choose our domain name which will be the name of our website then we can install WordPress and by WordPress I mean the actual open- Source software that is free to use once that's done we can log in to our WordPress dashboard and go to the theme library and there we can choose a theme which will give our website the basic structure and design usually themes come with a set of professionally designed website templates that give us a great starting point for a website and they're also fully customizable using a visual editor now if you want me to walk you through the entire process of setting up your first WordPress website using a free theme and free plugins then watch this video next where I walk you through the entire process step by step I'll see you there