Wordpress originally started out as a blogging platform – ie, a date-based collection of pages that end users could easily create by entering text in an on-screen editor. Posts could be categorised, allowing for easy retrieval of content with similar subject matter, and it supported a comments system which had generally been the preserve of forums.
Its best feature was the use of “themes” that could be written in the increasingly popular PHP, to truly seperate the content from the presentation, the goal of any website design. Themes extend the concept of style-sheets, which were introduced with the same purpose in mind.
As the concept of “pages” for static (non-dated) content was incorporated, WordPress found new use as a Content Management System (CMS) for traditional, non-blog websites.
For someone looking to create or update a website, Content Management Systems are the logical and most cost-effective way to proceed. Once the site has been created and designed, all the content is completely under your control without needing to learn any internet skills beyond being able to log in to a page.
Potentially, you need never pay anyone to maintain or update your site until the next time you want to redesign it.
The particular advantage of WordPress over other CMS’s (and there are a number) is that it is free, based on a popular language (PHP) that is installed on the vast majority web servers, and has a veritable army of people developing plug-ins to provide very specific functionality, and themes.
