The WordPress software is a powerful CMS (content management system) used for building websites. There are many wonderful aspects to WordPress and high among them are its flexibility and extensibility. Its secret? WordPress is open source software. This means it has a large community constantly contributing to its development and creating tools which provide additional functionality to its users. If you want to learn more about the WordPress open source project, the About WordPress.org page↗︎ is a good place to start.
Many hands make for light work, and the WordPress software is robust because of its open source community. The caveat to its power is its potential learning curve. While WordPress’ possibilities are amazing, they can also be overwhelming. There’s so much to learn and explore!
The good news is that a website doesn’t need to be super fancy in order to be effective. Often, less is more. The even better news is that WordPress works great for crafting simple websites, bringing the learning curve down to a much more manageable level – and that’s where we recommend you start. From here, you can continue to learn and grow your website one baby-step at a time.
WordPress outshines other website builders in that you will never outgrow it. WordPress.com makes it even easier by offering a progressive approach to hosting. You can start with a free site and upgrade through the plan tiers as needed, when you’re ready. The same is true for all the available tools. You can start simple and gradually move into more complex features and designs when you want to. Once you get going with this accessible yet powerful platform, you’ll never look for a more robust solution or have to start all over again.
It’s important to understand there are three main branches of WordPress:
- WordPress VIP↗︎ is the official managed host for enterprise businesses.
- WordPress.org↗︎ is the resource hub for the open source software that is used for self-hosted WordPress sites. It does not provide hosting.
- (Note: The “software” is free, “hosting” is not.)
- WordPress.com is the official managed host for WordPress sites.
Note: If you’d like to learn more about the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, which are commonly confused, we recommend reading this detailed article:
All of our courses are created for use with WordPress.com managed hosting. To get the most out of it, we recommend creating a free WordPress.com account and site (covered in the Quick Launch or Create Your Site course if you don’t have one already).
WordPress.com plan add-ons and upgrades are available, but optional. They’re useful when you decide you’re ready for the next level. As the official managed host for WordPress sites, WordPress.com does offer a free hosting option with some limitations. You can compare the features of all plans on our Pricing Page.
There are many benefits to choosing WordPress.com as your website host, but to highlight a handful:
- You can get started for free, keeping things simple, but can upgrade gradually to add more features and functionality as needed.
- As a managed host, we take care of the complicated behind-the-scenes stuff so you don’t have to worry about it. (Major learning curve avoided right there.)
- Our infrastructure comes with many of the most commonly used features built-in, so you have more functionality right from the start.
If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, you’re welcome to follow along, but many of the features and tools we’ll be working with will be set up differently or missing entirely for you. So you might need to get a bit investigative to find settings or alternatives for achieving certain outcomes.
There are also additional learning opportunities for self-hosted WordPress sites over at: https://learn.wordpress.org/ ↗︎
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