In May 2017, one of the most popular and powerful CMSs (content management system) WordPress celebrated its 13th anniversary. It was exactly 13 years ago WordPress opened its virtual doors for Internet users from all over the world for the first time providing millions of opportunities for website creation.
However, what is known about WordPress after all? It turned out that most of the users know nothing about the most widespread CMS. Due to the fact that this one is free and easy-to-use, users both old and new ones should be acquainted at least with a basic information on WordPress. Moreover, those who want to have a personal website must have at least general WordPress overview to use it. This article comprises some overall facts and the most propagated myths about WordPress that should be discussed.
Did you know that?
1. More than 70 million websites are based on WordPress. Besides, there are a lot of famous users like Forbes who chose WordPress.
2. Over 200,000 people make money using WordPress every day by means of personal websites.
3. WordPress occupies 29% of the total number of websites around the world. This CMS is the largest website community on the Earth.
4. Being rather popular among millions of users, WordPress has more than 20 thousand of plugins and its numbers increases every day. Moreover, WordPress Company and users with sufficient level of knowledge help to improve already created plugins.
5. The total number of plugin downloads exceeds 300 million.
6. WordPress is translated into a great variety of languages, including French, Russian, English, German and many others.
7. WordPress specialists are very demanded thanks to the propagation of this CMS. It would be easy to find a job for those who mastered WordPress. Although, it would be easy to handle this CMS since is it very simple and the Internet is fulfilled with guides and other data.
8. WordPress confidently outruns such well-known CMSs like Joomla and Drupal being more frequently used.
9. There is even a special kind of hosting for WordPress with specific settings for hardware and software to squeeze everything possible from this CMS, taking into account all its advantages and disadvantages. In addition, only a couple of years ago hosting for WordPress was an odd thing; now such packages of services are provided by almost all the companies. It won’t be difficult to get such services regardless of a location because WordPress is also very economical and undemanding CMS for computing resources.
10. WordPress is known as the best CMS for creating personal websites.
11. Google processes over 30 million search queries related to WordPress every week.
12. This is the only professional system, with all the components being free, including plugins, widgets and even technical support.
13. More than hundreds of volunteer programmers from all over the world try to improve the quality of WordPress and all its components for free.
14. WordPress is also updated for free on a regular basis, constantly increasing the level of functionality and security.
15. WordPress was launched in May 2003 on the Remembrance Day! This day all the USA citizens honor the memory of died soldiers.
16. WordPress originates from the blogging platform b2 / Cafelog, which was abandoned by its creators at the preliminary stage. In 2003, two users of b2 / Cafelog, Matt Mullenweg, and Mike Little, decided to make an entirely new platform based on b2 / Cafelog.
Myths about WordPress
1) The more plugins you have, the slower website works. It all depends on many factors. According to Mike Little, one of co-authors and developers of WordPress, some of the plugins work slowly, some work fast, and some do not influence the performance of CMS at all. Moreover, some plugins even increase a website operation speed.
2) Due to inactive plugins, a website works slower. Inactive plugins generally do not relate to operation speed at all. Nevertheless, all these inactive plugins should be updated to the latest version. “Overdue” versions of plugins increase the risk of vulnerability and security breach of a website.
3) Inactive themes slow a website. Inactive themes, do not affect the speed of a website either. As well as plugins, it is better to update themes to the latest version to avoid unpleasant consequences.
4) The more times posts are revised, the slower website works. Any revisions or changes do not influence website operation speed since WordPress is a smart engine that allows ignoring any even minor changes and MySQL is made in such a way so multiple versions of a website do not affect its operation speed. However, these versions require a lot of digital space, so it will be necessary to increase a website database.
5) Without deleting unnecessary files a website will work slower. As it was already mentioned, unnecessary files do not affect website operation speed either. The question is only about database capacity.
6) WordPress is used only for blogs. Originally, it was used only for blogs since it was created using blogging platform. Though, on the current stage of its development, WordPress fits perfectly for all the types of websites thanks to its multipurposeness.
7) WordPress is aimed at amateur projects. As a matter of fact, many worldwide famous companies based their websites on WordPress, for example Ford, Wall Street Journal, US Department of Health and many others.
8) WordPress is usually referred to low-quality websites. To some extent, it is true since most of the websites, especially blogs look and work terribly being based on WordPress. Nevertheless, owners of these websites just don’t use all the possibilities offered by this CMS. In fact, people who do their best to improve the usability of WordPress plugins also create themes and other details to make a website look better.
9) WordPress is absolutely insecure. WordPress is secure enough as well as other CMSs. It depends on the security measures. During the last few years, WordPress users didn’t experience any problems or security breaches working with this CMS. As it was said, themes and plugins without being updated can put your website at risk.
Since most of the users underestimate this CMS due to the widespread myths about it, I consider it my duty to bust them to enlighten people who still believe that WordPress is the one worst CMS among proposed. In general, it is the most user-friendly, simple CMS with a free access to all the plugins and themes providing the ability to create new ones and improve the existing ones.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Thanks to her knowledge and experience working as a freelance writer, the author of this article Melisa Marzett shares interesting information. However, her primal occupation is custom writing. She works on Royal Editor (http://royalediting.com). This is just in case if you liked her papers and want to cooperate with her in such a way.
