Wordpress is an open-source site-building tool based on PHP and MySQL programming languages. In more advanced terms it is called a content management system (CMS). When WordPress was first launched it had several users but over time grew into the biggest and most popular CMS in the world. Today, WordPress is powering over 75 million websites. A research carried out in April 2016 shows that this content management system was used by more than 26% of the 10 million best-ranking sites.

WordPress is completely free and supports all hosting platforms with PHP and MySQL. On top of that, this CMS is constantly updated with new versions that improve security, including new features and improve overall performance. Last, but not least, WordPress has a huge community with dedicated forums and discussions all over the internet. The amount of data that is available and thousands of WordPress tutorials also make WordPress one of the easiest to use content management systems out there.

What is a CMS?

A content management system or CMS for short is an application with the ability to create, modify and publish digital content. In most cases, it also supports multiple users, allowing them to work in collaboration. For example, in WordPress it is possible to create several administrative users, each one having different privileges. Content management systems also include text and formatting features, the ability to upload videos, photos, audio, maps or even your own code.

A content management system consists of two major components:

• A content management application (CMA). The CMA can be referred to as the graphical user interface (GUI) that lets a user create, modify, remove and publish content without ever needing to have knowledge of HTML or other programming languages.
• A content delivery application (CDA). The CDA is responsible for the back-end services that manage and deliver content after it is in the CMA.

Other features worth mentioning are:

• SEO-friendly URLs
• Online support and communities
• User/group functions
• Various templates and designs
• Installation wizards and upgrades/updates

The three most popular content management systems in the world are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.