WordPress: the CMS king of the Web

August 23, 2021| MondialPress
WordPress: the CMS king of the Web

Even if you’re not a geek, unfamiliar with CMS, you’ve probably heard of WordPress before. This titan reigns over the web, and particularly over content managers.

In 2001, Michel Valdrighi began the development of b2, a software for publishing blogs. Two years later, Matthew Mullenweg and Mike Little fix bugs and add features. The software becomes B2évolution, then WordPress. Version 1.0 was released in 2004 and has been enriched with new features every year. Be careful not to confuse WordPress.org and WordPress.com: where the former manages the open source distribution of the CMS, the latter provides a hosting service for a WordPress site. This content manager is distributed in open source under the GNU GPL license. The statistics on WordPress are dizzying, since nearly 40% of sites are powered by this manager. Over 500 sites are built with WordPress every day! The American giant The Walt Disney Company and the New York Gugenheim Museum trust WordPress to power their website.

WordPress is renowned for its installation in 5 minutes, and more generally for its simplicity. Thanks to its popularity, it is often offered as an automatic installation by hosting providers. For a basic site of a few pages, an amateur can manage, but for a professional, high traffic or international site, a specialist is recommended.

WordPress is relatively easy to use, with a welcome guide that shows you what you can do with this manager. However, recent versions have multiplied information and toolbars, which may put off beginners. The administration interface is quite clear and localized in the language of your choice (over 120). The editor has a reduced administration interface, making it more comfortable to navigate.

With more than 64% of CMS market share, WordPress has conquered the web. It shines through its free, intuitive, functional and aesthetic richness and its versatility. It attracts self-taught, liberal professions, small businesses (with the WooCommerce plug-in) or even very small businesses. Since the Gutenberg update, WP is even easier to incorporate new components. But this content manager is often easy prey for hackers, who target incompetent or careless users. Real know-how is needed to operate and maintain it.

Categories: Blog