Wordpress Tutorials
Introduction

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Tutorial Overview

Topics covered in this Wordpress tutorial (click link to jump to topic):

1.	What is it?
2.	The Two Faces of Wordpress
3.	Why is it any good?
4.	Ticked off...

What is it?

According to www.wordpress.org: “WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”

According to wikipedia: “WordPress is a free and open source blog publishing application.”

Put simply, Wordpress is a content management system. That means it has a hidden back end to the web site that can be accessed with a user name and password. Once you are logged into the back end or mission control or the dashboard, of whatever you prefer to call it, you control the front end of the site.

The Two Faces of Wordpress

WordPress has a free, hosted solution at www.wordpress.com OR you can download and set up a complete installation of WordPress on your own domain from www.wordpress.org.

People generally graduate from one to the other, ending up with their own site. The hosted solution is a good place to start because you cant break anything.

Why is any good, after all there are many other content management systems out there?

The short answer is: its easier to use than the other systems. People get it faster and get more out of it over the longer term. The worst outcome for a content management system is that people don’t get it when they first log in. They never get to first base and abandon the idea of managing their own web site.

Also there are a massive number of people writing plugins and new themes for Wordpress. It is very extendable. Plugins are little modules of helper software that do a specific function. You can add and remove them easily. Likewise themes control the design. Many thousands of these are pre-existing and only need to be downloaded and installed on the site.

Ticked off…

Content management, change it when you want
Free off the shelf design called “themes”
Plugins for forms, image galleries, SEO and in fact most things you can think of
Use it as a blog, or not
Link management
Extensive documentation

Other Resources

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