Introduction:-
WordPress
What is WordPress?
The above is the video clip on the what is wordpress.
WordPress is an open source blogging tool that is completely free of use. It is content based management that is based on PHP and MySQL. The WordPress runs on web hosting service with features such as template system and plug-in architecture included. WordPress at the moment is one of the most popular blogging system used by many in the web.
Why use WordPress?
Why use WordPress? It is because WordPress is a very easy way to blog about things that people like, for example, people can write things about what interest them, like photography, sports, cookery, story or just plain daily life about themselves. The other thing is that with WordPress people can also make websites, what I mean to say is that the bloggers can use pre-made themes or install them or upload them via FTP and switch between them. The other thing is that the theme’s can also be modified or changed through the advance features found in the code of the theme that is PHP, HTML and CSS of the theme can be edited or added. So it is very easy to use and apply theme and make the website page, as well as using different theme has different functionality. So if the user change the theme it will also change the look with the functionality of the page too. The other good feature is the plug-in architecture that allows user to add features such a slider plug-in and many more. Thus WordPress at the moment is very useful and is popular.
Advantages and Disadvantages:-
Advantages:
- First very easy to make blogs or website, you don’t need any prior knowledge to HTML or PHP. Pre-installed plug-ins and template functions that allows them to be installed easily. The only thing needed is to choose a template or plug-in and choose to install them. Thus helps people who are just beginners.
- As there are many plug-ins available on the website most which are free to use allows the WordPress to be considered content management system. Even though Hotglue is also considered as CMS but it is not the advance as to WordPress even though both are choice for beginner website designers.
- Many choices of templates (themes) that the users can preview or activate it so as to have that website look. Thus there are both paid ones and free templates available for use, but the paid ones have more interesting features and is advance too.
Disadvantages:
- The first disadvantage that i can think of is the when the user want to modify the template they would need some knowledge in PHP so that they can edit.
- The other thing is also the knowledge of HTML and CSS. Even though there are various templates in WordPress. Most of them are similar so to have a unique website or webpage, they have to edit it in editor of the WordPress basically this mean they must know CSS and HTML.
- The third disadvantage what I found while researching on the efficiency of the scripts. It had shown that the scripts (PHP) is not as well protected like other applications. So basically everything depends on how sensitiveness of the content of the page.
Conclusion (My experience):-
Using WordPress to build my web portfolio and design website for my client was really easy and helpful. It was also because the fact that I have the knowledge of HTML and CSS well. It was lot easier to build my web portfolio and as well to document my works rather than Hotglue which I did not enjoy. Hotglue was easy but it was annoying too, because I was not able to assign my layout and structure of of my portfolio in the centre, as well as there were other limitations which I had to use brute force to add images and text, as there were not much font chocies. Here in WordPress it did not have those limitation, it was really easy to assign attributes and function, plus on top of that most of the web page designed or edited here in WordPress is responsive. The only problem I had was that I had hard time reading and understanding the theme codes written by others so as to edit.
Other thing I found really nice about using WordPress was that the plug-ins that came with it or variety of plug-in option that I got to do. Like example for the client’s website that I made I was able to add a image slider easily so as to look like my website that I had designed in the mock-ups. So the slider was just a plug-in that I was able to install and use and just add it on the page. So it was very simple, laying out the text structure was also very easy and simple. I had typed everything in Word software and structured it and then simply I put the text in WordPress that has “paste from word” option button that allowed me to exactly put in the text and the layout and structure.
So overall, I want to say that WordPress is a very good content management system and blogging tool, due to its variety of themes/template and pre-installed plug-ins makes it a good system for beginner web designer or user to start developing or learning about websites.
Mangs's Portfolio 