WordPress is an open-source content management system (CRM) that powers millions of websites around the world. It was first developed in 2003 and has been constantly updated by a team of developers located around the world. The WordPress platform currently powers roughly 30% of the entire web.

If you are new to WordPress, we recommend that you begin with the following:

• New To WordPress – Where to Start
• First Steps With WordPress or Upgrading WordPress Extended
• WordPress Lessons

Is WordPress Free?

Yes. WordPress is licensed under what is known as a General Public License (GNU). This simply means that the software is open source, which allows anyone to contribute as well as redistribute the original source code for no charge.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

WordPress offers ultimate control over every aspect of your website. Whether you’re creating a simple blog, or a complex membership site, WordPress is more than able to handle your needs. In addition, with WordPress you have full ownership over all of your designs and content, which is not the case with many remotely hosted website providers. WordPress sites are also extremely easy to manage because you have a simple interface that allows you to make changes to your website in the same way that you might use a word processor. Not to mention the huge pool of resources and contractors available to help if you get stuck!

 How do I install WordPress?

WordPress can be installed manually using their famous 5-minute installation process, but most hosting companies make this much easier. Most shared hosting plans feature 1-click installation from your main account page or cPanel.

What are Some of the Features of WordPress?

The full feature list for WordPress is quite exhaustive and is constantly changing. You can always view a current list of the major features that are included in WordPress by clicking here.

Is it Possible to Move my website from WordPress.com to another web host?

Absolutely! Some people do not realize that your WordPress site doesn’t have to be hosted with WordPress.com. In fact, all the major web hosts offer simple one click installations so that you can literally install WordPress on your domain in a matter of minutes, even if you have very little technical experience.

Do I Need to Know HTML or PHP to Use WordPress?

No. WordPress was built to be used by the masses. While in certain instances it may be advantageous to know PHP, it is most definitely not a requirement to setup a basic website.

What are Themes?

Themes represent the actual styling and layout of your WordPress site. There are literally thousands of themes, some of which are free, and some of which cost a small amount of money, but can allow you to create a highly professional website with very little custom coding.

What are WordPress Plugins?

Another one of the biggest benefits of WordPress is the access to thousands of high quality plugins that can allow web site owners to instantly add all sorts of functionality to their websites. These plugins provide all sorts of added features such as the ability to connect to email marketing providers, as well as the ability to turn your WordPress site into a fully functional e-commerce store. While these are just a few examples of WordPress plugins, they should show you the versatility of this platform.

Is WordPress Customizable?

Absolutely! By using WordPress themes and plugins, you can customize your website so that it conveys your brand image. You can fully customize the layout as well as colors, images, content and much more.

Is WordPress Secure?

Yes. Open source developers are constantly working to ensure WordPress is as secure as possible. If any security issues are found, developers quickly release WordPress updates which can be downloaded and installed automatically from the WordPress dashboard.

WordPress plugins are also constantly updated to add additional features as well as to plug up any security vulnerabilities that may have been found. In addition, there are specific WordPress security plugins that are designed to protect your website from malware attacks and malicious logins.

Most common Security Problems with WordPress and how to fix them

11 things about your website you need to keep in a secure location.

Understanding WordPress Security from the ground up

Are WordPress plugins free?

WordPress offers a wide variety of free plugins that can be downloaded from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory and installed onto your website. Most plugins offer a premium, or paid, version that provides additional services and enables access to a full support team.

Are WordPress themes free?

Similar to plugins, the WordPress.org Theme Directory offers a vast selection of free themes that may be downloaded to customize your website. While there are benefits to purchasing a theme, WordPress’ free themes often provide great functionality and professional design feel.

Are WordPress websites free?

Using the WordPress software is free; however, there are minimum costs for using WordPress for websites. WordPress users must pay a small fee for web hosting services. Sites can also be professionally designed by paid web developers.

Are WordPress sites responsive?

You can design your WordPress site to be responsive which automatically adjusts it to fit any mobile screen. Many WordPress themes are often designed to conveniently make your WordPress site responsive; similarly, there are many plugins that are mobile-optimized.

Can WordPress be used for ecommerce?

WordPress is a popular platform for users looking to build an ecommerce-based website. WordPress users can install plugins that integrates the online shopping feature into their site, such as the widely used WooCommerce plugin.

A few examples of site that use woo.

Porter and York

The Good Batch

Blue Star Coffee Roasters

Can WordPress be used offline?

WordPress can be installed and used offline to enable WordPress users to make changes and download features into their site via a local server. However, this will require downloading additional software to recreate the local development environment on your computer.

Can WordPress handle heavy traffic?

The amount of traffic that WordPress can handle varies with the web host and your WordPress installation such as plugins and themes. Typically, VPS (virtual private server) is built to manage heavy traffic better than a cheaper alternative of shared hosting.

Here is a great list of sites that run WordPress with tons of traffic  Read More

Can a WordPress site be private?

Your WordPress site pages and posts can be made private by adjusting the visibility. In the post or page editor screen, the Publish bar lists “Status,” “Visibility,” “Revisions” (for Pages) and “Published on.” Edit the “Visibility” option and set it to “Private.” Now your private WordPress content can only be viewed by you or authorized visitors.

Can WordPress sites be hacked?

Because WordPress is the most widely used CMS, this unfortunately makes it an easy target for hackers. WordPress sites can commonly be hacked if WordPress users do not regularly update their software, themes and plugins, or take basic security measures to protect their website. We recomend several security plugins such as Wordfence, Sucuri

We also offer hosting that keeps your sites updated and safe you can read about it here

How does WordPress work?

WordPress operates with two open-source components: PHP and mySQL. PHP is a popular, server-side scripting language that enables users to develop dynamic websites and sort information into HTML. MySQL is a widely used database management system. Both components are used to create WordPress’ user-friendly interface and functionality.

How do WordPress plugins work?

WordPress plugins are pre-written blocks of code that are installed directly onto your WordPress site to add more functionality. Plugins can create front-end features, such as adding a social media feed to your home page, or also run internally, such as improving your site’s SEO.

How does WordPress search works?

After the 2013 update, WordPress search lists results by relevance. From most to least relevant, the results are listed: the user’s search query matches a full sentence in a post’s title, all search keywords in a post’s title, any (not all) keywords in a post’s title, and lastly, a full sentence in the post’s content.

How does WordPress make money?

Because WordPress is a non-profit organization licensed under GPL, its source of revenue is primarily through donations made by individual WordPress users and companies that employ WordPress software for corporate use. If your site is hosted by paid service providers, these companies probably make regular contributions to WordPress Foundation.

What are WordPress themes?

A WordPress theme is a pre-arranged collection of templates and stylesheets that create the front-end interface of your WordPress site. WordPress themes have preset selections on font, colors, page templates, and other stylistic elements of the website.

What WordPress theme is a site using?

There are many websites that allow WordPress users to paste the URL of the site they are inquiring about; tools like IsItWP or What WordPress Theme Is That? reveal information about a site’s WordPress themes and plugins. You can also check the source code by right-clicking on a site and selecting “View Page Source.” At the top of the HTML document, there is a URL to the CSS ‘stylesheet’ which contains information about the site theme.

What WordPress plugins is a site using?

There are many free websites that are excellent tools for revealing what plugins are implemented into a WordPress site. Similar to determining what WordPress theme a site is using, you can also search through the site’s source code and search for plugin directories or HTML comments that indicate use of a WordPress plugin.

What WordPress version am I using?

You can check what version of WordPress software you have by checking the bottom right corner of your WordPress site’s admin page. If it does not appear, another options is to check the site’s source code and search for the ‘generator’ tag or the admin log-in page’s source code and search for the keyword ‘ver=’.

When was WordPress originally developed?

The first version of the WordPress software was released on May 27, 2003 by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg. The co-founders officially created WordPress after Mullenweg forked the discontinued, original b2/cafelog blogging system and created a new branch that, after over a thousand commits, was officially published under the name “WordPress.”

When is the functions.php file loaded in WordPress?

The file functions.php is automatically loaded on the front-end interface of your WordPress site, as well as the back-end admin page. Each WordPress site has its own functions.php file, so only the file for the theme being actively used on your site will run.

Where does WordPress store web pages?

WordPress stores pages along with other data in the MySQL database, the database management system used by WordPress. Specifically, your WordPress site pages are stored in the database table labeled ‘wp_posts’ which stores all WordPress content including posts, pages, and custom posts.

Where does WordPress store images?

WordPress stores images in its directory under ‘wp-content/uploads/’; images are further categorized by the four-digit year and two-digit month. Images can be searched in your WordPress database in the Post table; their ‘post_type’ is set as  an attachment.

How to I add a featured image?

When working on a post, click the link to “Set featured image” in the “Featured Image” meta box. This will open your media library. Either select an image or upload a new one and save.

Where is the WordPress database located?

Retrieving your WordPress database depends on your site’s server host. But regardless, locate the cPanel, select the Files button, then access the File Manager. Then, edit the ‘wp-config.php’ file and locate the database name in the code. Using a software such as phpMyAdmin will enable you to perform actions with the database.

Where can the ‘htaccess’ file be located in WordPress?

Accessing the ‘.htaccess’ file requires a direct connection to a File Transfer Protocol client. Once the connection is established, open the file folder labeled with your website domain. Locate the ‘.htaccess’ file. If the file does not exist, you can access your dashboard, go into Settings, select Permalinks, and click Save Changes to prompt WordPress to create the file.

Where is the WordPress admin password stored?

Your WordPress admin password is stored in the MySQL database. By accessing the ‘wp-config.php’ file, you can view the database password and access credentials. In addition, WordPress username passwords are stored and hashed in ‘wp-users’ table of the database.

Who is logged into my WordPress site?

The most convenient method of tracking who is logged into your WordPress site is by installing this specific plugin. Another method is by altering the code within the ‘wp_users’ and ‘functions.php’ file; although this may seem more difficult, it enables you to access specific tracking information for your site visitors.

Who is online and accessing my WordPress site?

Similar to accessing information about who is logged into your WordPress site, you can discover who is online in real time by installing specific plugins. These plugins are commonly used to display the statistic of how many visitors are online in real time on the front-end of the WordPress site.

Will WordPress die in the near future?

Based on current statistics, WordPress’ is increasing popularity among small businesses to large companies. With the anticipation of its near release of version 5.0, WordPress does not appear to be showing any signs of decline. Seeing as it is ranked the top-choice of CMS, the likelihood of WordPress deteriorating anytime soon is relatively low.

Will WordPress run on a Windows server?

WordPress can run on a Windows server. There are multiple ways to go about downloading the WordPress software onto your Windows server; the Microsoft software that is commonly installed is Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer or XAMPP.  I’d personally rather chop off my big toe, but it can be done.

Will WordPress run on PHP 7?

WordPress is now supported by PHP 7, which is now the recommended PHP version for the WordPress software. It is encouraged to test PHP 7 on a backup copy of your live WordPress site. This will prevent any potential damage to existing plugins or themes.

Here is some information on why to upgrade. PHP 8 is coming down the pipe.

Why is my WordPress site so slow?

Using a tool such as Pingdom or GTMetrix can test your WordPress site for factors that are potentially slowing down your website. Often times, a slower WordPress site is due to your web hosting provider. WordPress configuration, using high CPU plugins, page size, external scripts, or overloading your database.

A need for Speed a WordPress story

WordPress available in my language?

Maybe! Currently there are 169 locale WordPress translations available, with 10 of them at 100% up to date. Just visit the WordPress Polyglots page to check for your language or to even contribute to the translation proces

Why is WordPress the best option for SEO?

WordPress offers incomparable SEO for your WordPress site. WordPress’ search-engine optimized permalinks, its performance-boosting SEO plugins (Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, etc.), and its seamless incorporation of your social media channels to increase site marketing. Some of the things to look at when using these plugins are:

• Titles & meta
• Social links
• XML sitemaps
• Breadcrumbs
• Image Tags
• Other

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Will it slow down my website if I install too many plugins?

We see this question a LOT and the answer is maybe. The issue typically isn’t with the number of plugins you install but rather the size, function and quality of the plugins.

• Large plugins: Everything but the kitchen sink plugins typically include features for just about everything which makes plugin management easy for you as the user, but it could slow your website down as the more a single plugin does then the more resources it will require.
• Plugin conflicts: The top issues we see related to plugins are incompatibility or duplicate features. Some plugins simply don’t work when installed on the same website (for example, WooCommerce does not work with W3 Total Cache). Similarly, you really should avoid duplicate functionality. You only need one slider plugin, one SEO plugin, one security plugin, etc.
• Poor quality: You may come across a plugin that sounds great but once installed slows or brings your website down to a halt completely. Unfortunately there are a lot of poorly coded plugins floating around the web, which is why we always recommend using plugins for reputable sources (such as WordPress.org or CodeCanyon).