Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a eulogy to PHP, JavaScript and so on. It’s an overview of the way WordPress (WP) works and what makes it so flexible and powerful.
Essentially WP works like most other dynamic web site frameworks – or Content management Systems (CMS’s). The BBC web site is one big CMS and each little WordPress web site runs on the same principles.
In the previous article about the History of WordPress mention was made about it being a good platform for developing websites and not just blogs. The latest release of WordPress has improved the interface to make it even more ‘user-friendly’ so that editing content and adding new pages to a site are straightforward.
WordPress can be traced back to 2001 as an early blogging system. WordPress proper came into being in 2003 and was created as an Open Source (free, non-commercial) project. It has been developed and enhanced since then by a huge community of developers.
In its early days it was just used for blogging. It wasn’t long before people spotted its potential as a Content management System (CMS) for user-editable web sites. Since 2005, it has undergone various upgrades and enhancements with many web site-oriented features added, to make it the system it is now.
