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What exactly is WordPress??
WordPress as an easy to use website publishing tool
I remind myself daily that as an Internet marketing professional there are things that I do and use every day that aren't as common as they would seem to be. WordPress is a perfect example. There are currently over 26 million websites in the world powered by WordPress. It continues to evolve into a simple to use website publishing tool that anyone can use, but a lot of people still haven't heard of it or don't realize how easy it really is.
I recently attended a WordPress conference (WordCamp) where developers and users get together to share ideas and network. There are various sessions regarding the uses of WordPress, it's themes and it's plugins and I came away with some great information as well as some exciting insights. One of the things that impacted me the mosts was the beginner WordPress class. In this class there were about 80 people in attendance of which over 70% were women and well over 50% were over 50 years old. These were mostly people creating websites or blogs for their businesses and in a few cases casual use. A couple of years ago the thought of having this kind of audience learning how to create their own sites would have been unheard of. There were also classes for kids to learn how to create their own WordPress websites and blogs, and even a track of sessions geared directly towards Real Estate agents and brokers.
What kind of websites can run on WordPress
The current numbers indicate that the top 12-14% of websites use WordPress as their content management tool. From top news sites like CNN to college sites like Wake Forest University, WordPress can handle anything that you would want. In automotive retail of course you could create micro-sites or blogs that add value to your clients while helping with your local SEO efforts.
WordPress terms and lingo
In the world of WordPress there are several terms that are thrown around quite a bit. If you are just hearing about WordPress for the first time or have heard just a little then you'll want to know what these are.
- CMS or Content Management System: A Content Management System is software that allows users to contribute and add content to a shared environment. In the case of websites we are using a Web Content Management System or WCMS to add pages, blog posts, video, audio, images and much more to a website without having to have the technical knowledge of a web developer
- Theme: A WordPress theme is the graphics of a site that your users will see and interact with. With WordPress you can choose from over 1,300 free themes, buy one of the hundreds of commercial themes available, or even custom build a theme to fit whatever brand message and usability you want
- Plugins: A Plugin is software that can give you the ability to extend the functionality of WordPress to do just about anything that you can think of
- Widgets: Widgets are like a plugin that allows you to add functionality through drag and drop to your site without having to edit code
WordPress as the automotive website of the future
This video is from a session that I did at Digital Dealer 8 in Orlando last Spring. I have added this video so that you can get a better idea of the power of WordPres. A lot has changed with WordPress since then including some of the statistics. According to Wikipedia last year WordPress had been downloaded and used for over 200 million websites. Over the last year WordPress has gone through and cleaned up old sites on WordPress.com and has identified that a large number of sites have been either left as inactive or are not used for legitimate purposes. This brings the estimated number of actual websites to around 26 million that are currently powered by WordPress, which is still incredible.
Related Posts: How to set up hosting for WordPress
DealerTrend - CarDealerPress
What exactly is WordPress??
WordPress as an easy to use website publishing tool
I remind myself daily that as an Internet marketing professional there are things that I do and use every day that aren't as common as they would seem to be. WordPress is a perfect example. There are currently over 26 million websites in the world powered by WordPress. It continues to evolve into a simple to use website publishing tool that anyone can use, but a lot of people still haven't heard of it or don't realize how easy it really is.
I recently attended a WordPress conference (WordCamp) where developers and users get together to share ideas and network. There are various sessions regarding the uses of WordPress, it's themes and it's plugins and I came away with some great information as well as some exciting insights. One of the things that impacted me the mosts was the beginner WordPress class. In this class there were about 80 people in attendance of which over 70% were women and well over 50% were over 50 years old. These were mostly people creating websites or blogs for their businesses and in a few cases casual use. A couple of years ago the thought of having this kind of audience learning how to create their own sites would have been unheard of. There were also classes for kids to learn how to create their own WordPress websites and blogs, and even a track of sessions geared directly towards Real Estate agents and brokers.
What kind of websites can run on WordPress
The current numbers indicate that the top 12-14% of websites use WordPress as their content management tool. From top news sites like CNN to college sites like Wake Forest University, WordPress can handle anything that you would want. In automotive retail of course you could create micro-sites or blogs that add value to your clients while helping with your local SEO efforts.
WordPress terms and lingo
In the world of WordPress there are several terms that are thrown around quite a bit. If you are just hearing about WordPress for the first time or have heard just a little then you'll want to know what these are.
- CMS or Content Management System: A Content Management System is software that allows users to contribute and add content to a shared environment. In the case of websites we are using a Web Content Management System or WCMS to add pages, blog posts, video, audio, images and much more to a website without having to have the technical knowledge of a web developer
- Theme: A WordPress theme is the graphics of a site that your users will see and interact with. With WordPress you can choose from over 1,300 free themes, buy one of the hundreds of commercial themes available, or even custom build a theme to fit whatever brand message and usability you want
- Plugins: A Plugin is software that can give you the ability to extend the functionality of WordPress to do just about anything that you can think of
- Widgets: Widgets are like a plugin that allows you to add functionality through drag and drop to your site without having to edit code
WordPress as the automotive website of the future
This video is from a session that I did at Digital Dealer 8 in Orlando last Spring. I have added this video so that you can get a better idea of the power of WordPres. A lot has changed with WordPress since then including some of the statistics. According to Wikipedia last year WordPress had been downloaded and used for over 200 million websites. Over the last year WordPress has gone through and cleaned up old sites on WordPress.com and has identified that a large number of sites have been either left as inactive or are not used for legitimate purposes. This brings the estimated number of actual websites to around 26 million that are currently powered by WordPress, which is still incredible.
Related Posts: How to set up hosting for WordPress
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