WordPress: A bit of everything about the most popular CMS
WordPress is software designed with an emphasis on accessibility, performance, security, and ease of use, which has made it the most popular CMS today. It's a powerful software that works easily with minimal configuration, allowing website administrators, bloggers, and digital content creators to focus on managing their work and sharing their posts, products, or services.
The WordPress CMS ( Content Management System) is not only a basic product, whose handling is simple and predictable , but also offers powerful features and add-ons (Themes, Plugins, among others) that allow it to grow as an application and facilitate the growth, development and success of the websites created with it.
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In previous posts about WordPress on the DesdeLinux Blog, we have covered isolated aspects such as: What is it?, with the 2.015 post called " Meet the new and improved WordPress.com, Calypso! " , its installation and configuration with Apache2 and Nginx, with the 2016 and 2018 posts called " Installation and configuration of WordPress 4.5 Multisite on Debian Jessie " and " How to install WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04 and derivatives? " respectively.
They've also created posts about their most useful or favorite plugins of 2016, such as " 8 Interesting WordPress Plugins for Your Website " and " 3 Freemium Plugins You Can't Miss on Your WordPress Site . " However, they haven't published articles about their themes or other aspects like configurations or security policies.
In this publication, we will clearly explain what a CMS is , what utility it provides, and what characteristics define it as software, in addition to mentioning what WordPress is.
What is a CMS?
History
Before explaining in detail what a CMS is, it is good to understand that in the early days of Computer Science or Web Technology, creating a relatively simple website could be a rather complex and laborious activity , even for experts, when the development to be implemented required high standards of visual quality, navigation structure and variety of content.
Web programmers or developers used to need to know and/or master various technologies , such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, to create a static website. Or ASP, JSP, or PHP if it was a dynamic website, just to name a few of the most popular and readily available technologies of recent times. And updating the content also became a difficult task as the website grew with new sections, structures, or hierarchies.
Often, all of this—modifying existing content, searching for and locating sections and modules, and even managing both pages and images and resources on the server—was done by the same programmers or web developers using their own tools or developments , which caused an increase in costs and complexity of the website.
This situation created an unspoken need for a general-purpose, easy-to-use tool , both for creating websites without expert assistance, advanced technical resources, or other external tools, and for managing, administering, and maintaining them within an integrated environment. And that's how the first Content Management Systems, or CMS, began to be created to meet this need.
Concept
Therefore, a CMS can be summarized very usefully and briefly as follows:
"A software tool to create, administer and manage a website."
And in a more extensive way, what a CMS is:
«An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that allows us to create, manage, maintain and update a website, in addition to itself. And that generally includes a certain amount of options and extra functions, such as: Product Catalogs, Site Map, Image Galleries, Themes, Complements, Shopping Carts, among many others ».
Utility
A CMS, in its simplest conception, should not only allow the creation of a website, but also facilitate its creation and management without requiring in-depth knowledge of the technologies related to this process ; that is, it should allow a basic user of the area, with certain basic knowledge related to web page editing, to create and manage one with relative ease.
For this purpose, a good CMS, such as WordPress, must separate into two areas what typical users see as an integrated whole: the design or visual aspect of the website and its content , both in the form of text and multimedia: office files, images, animations, videos, sounds, among others.
Therefore, in a complete and functional CMS, the design and its content must be independent. This ensures that when the website design is changed, the content will not be affected and will continue to be displayed and adapted to the characteristics of the new design.
Therefore, it is not good practice to add design elements within the content , so that a change in the design of a website does not mean an extra effort such as reviewing all the content to remove or revise those elements.
Therefore, one of the first tasks when creating a website with a CMS is usually to carefully select or design its visual appearance or theme. This allows you to then add the content that will be displayed in the designated spaces within the template.
Features
A truly comprehensive CMS should include by default a good list of capabilities, features, options, and functions that help both in the creation of a basic website without requiring additional modules or external adaptations, and in the development of an advanced website through modules, plugins, or specific adaptations or external integrations.
Among these we can mention the following:
Web access
It must provide the ability or functionality to access it, without having to be installed, from any Computer or Device with access to a Web Browser and Internet connection, that is, remotely. This is not a must-have feature or functionality, but it does add flexibility and ease of use.
Fast learning curve
It should favor the rapid use of it by basic users (office automation) with certain technical knowledge, for an efficient and effective command of the tool (Editing and content management), provided that this does not include the need to use the configuration options and administration thereof.
Content and resource management
It must include all the typical functions and characteristics for editing, organizing, reviewing, programming and publishing content, both text and multimedia: office files, images, animations, videos, sounds, among others.
Administration and management interface
It should show the most common and useful configuration options in their respective graphical administration interface, to minimize and / or avoid the manipulation of text files for configuration that require a deeper knowledge of the tool or the platform where it is installed.
User Profiles
You must be able to create and manage various user profiles, with different roles and responsibilities, such as authors, editors or administrators, so that based on them, the users of the websites can do different things and obtain different experiences of use, based on your accesses, privileges or restrictions.
Complete Text Editor
It should include a text editor as complete and advanced as possible that facilitates giving an optimal format to any content, thus improving its reading and monitoring by users. A good text editor, among many things, must include options such as the use of bold and italic characters, numbered lists or not, paragraphs, indentation, among many others.
Content categorization
It must make it easier for the user to locate any content of interest, allowing its categorization, in order to obtain a display of only what is necessary and sought.
Programming Plugins and Interfaces
It must allow the installation, integration and use of Plugins and Programming Interface Applications (API), to add new and better or specific functionalities to the content manager. Allowing the growth of the Tool itself and the website.
Configurable / customizable visual design
It should facilitate the design possibilities of a website, so that website designers do not have any limitation or restriction on their creative work, and their designs can be easily integrated.
Separate content and layout management
As we said before, a good CMS should be able to let a designer make and integrate their design, and editors or authors write their content, without the changes of one or the other interfering with each other.
SEO Positioning
You must achieve the generation of websites that comply with the guidelines or policies for the Webmasters of the main search engines. In other words, the creation of websites comply with the basic positioning factors, that is, that they are "SEO-friendly".
Efficient, fast and low resource consumption
It must be a computer application that does not overload the resources of the server where it is hosted, that is, it uses its resources rationally for its own execution (memory, CPU, hard disk). So that it does not affect the general performance of the web server and, consequently, does not negatively affect the user experience of the websites.
Technical support and user community
It must have efficient and effective technical support, which addresses the failures and errors of the application, and with a wide community of users, with its own participation forums, wikis, blogs, among other tools, that facilitate help with any incident. , and thus solve quickly.
What is WordPress?
WordPress (WP) is currently one of the most widely used CMS platforms in the entire app ecosystem. It boasts a massive community of millions of users focused not only on creating blogs but also on building any type of website, no matter how simple or robust it needs to be.
WordPress began in 2003 when Mime Little and Matt Mullenweg created a fork of b2/cafelog. This was due to the need for a personal, elegant, and well-structured publishing system at the time. Today, WordPress uses the PHP language, MySQL as its database management system , and Apache as its web hosting service under the GPL license. Therefore, this application or software tool meets the Open Source (OS) criteria used in Free Software (FS).
WordPress is a robust, free-to-download and free-to-use CMS , but it's also a huge and excellent website hosting and publishing platform, offering both free and paid services, known as " WordPress.com, " which receives frequent updates. It also has a sister domain, " WordPress.org, " also available in Spanish, which boasts a wealth of useful informational and technical content.
Nowadays
In general terms, it can be said that it is one of the most used mainly due to its extreme ease of use , which makes it ideal for both beginner users and their first website or for professional users and their multiple web projects, from relatively small websites without special requirements, such as corporate websites or powerful blogs.
Its extensive official and unofficial library of plugins covers almost every essential implementation need. Its huge, highly experienced, methodical, and organized global user community, with its numerous languages and excellent forums, is extremely collaborative and helpful in resolving any issues (bugs and errors) that may arise with the tool.
WordPress isn't perfect, but it is very comprehensive. It may have some limitations in its out-of-the-box web design features, but this is offset by the enormous selection of free and paid plugins, themes, and templates available to cover virtually any website need.
Conclusion
In this post, we've taken an in-depth look at what a CMS is and what WordPress is. In future posts about WordPress, we'll delve deeper into its current features, its community, its support, what themes and plugins are, and which ones are currently the most popular. We'll also explore some security tips to fulfill the initial objectives of this post and present online or installable alternatives to WordPress.
For now, it should be clear to us that it is not correct or appropriate to allow ourselves to have a website whose content can only be managed by qualified technical professionals ; due to reasons of dependence on specific personnel, costs and the dynamism of the website itself.
The most logical course of action is to opt for a generic CMS rather than a custom-built content management system , to have sufficient versatility and flexibility for incorporating modules or plugins, both paid and free, available from a large global community that also offers help and support. WordPress is considered an excellent first choice for a CMS.