Good Stuff from Rene: Volume 1 – What is WordPress?

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the “Good Stuff” newsletter, a bi-monthly heartfelt email I share with my friends. I’m glad you’re here!

When I started emailing people individually that I was venturing into uncharted territory, I received a lot of positive encouragement and well wishes. “Rene, I’m so happy for you! Congratulations!” Long pause. “What is WordPress?”

In my excitement and anticipation of FINALLY doing something more in tune with my personality, I totally overlooked the fact that not everyone knows what WordPress IS or what it DOES or what exactly I’m trying to do.

So I thought it would be best to start out with a super brief overview of WordPress and how I hope to help people.

A long, long time ago (back when I was in college in the late 90s), people built websites with HTML. You’d open up Notepad, type some HTML, save it as index.html and then open it in your browser. Ta da! (The rest of the world could then get to it by name once you purchased said name and uploaded it to wherever you purchased hosting.)

Around 2003, a new player came on the scene – WordPress. WordPress is open-source software, meaning that it’s 1) free and 2) a user-driven project. Anyone can contribute to developments and enhancements. (How cool is that?)

WordPress was originally a blogging platform, but now it’s so much more. It is a CMS, or a content management system; information isn’t hard-coded in that index.html file, but rather you have …

      The MySQL database that holds the data

+    The HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript files

+    The easy-to-use interface for modifying the above

=    Your amazing site! What the world and your customers see when they go to youramazingsite.com

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?

Want to start a blog but don’t know any coding? No problem. Want to sell your homemade felt hand warmers online? No problem. Want to allow customers to book appointments with you online? No problem.

You don’t need to know anything about coding or databases or any of that. You just need to know how to use the interface to create and update content. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can update a WordPress site.

WordPress is so prevalent that at this point, it powers about 27% of all websites.

“So… if it’s so awesome and DIY, why do I need to hire someone? Couldn’t I do it myself? What are you actually trying to do, Rene?”

I’m glad you asked.

There’s a lot to it, maybe more than some people have the time or interest for.

Here’s what I do:

• Help you figure out what you need. What are your business goals? How can a website help you achieve those goals?
• Set everything up locally. Download the files from wordpress.org, install WordPress and create a database.
• Choose an out-of-the-box theme, buy a pre-made theme, customize an existing theme OR code a new theme based on a beautiful design (typically done by a Web designer). You want your theme to be responsive – it should look good on your desktop, tablet AND phone. 
• Add and customize additional features related to the business goals we talked about. Features like image galleries, event calendars, online ordering, integrating with social media and more. In the WordPress world, these are called plugins.
• Add content! All the things – text, images, videos and other information about you and your business.
• Publish it to your hosting provider and make it accessible using your domain name. 
• Teach you how to use it – how to create new and update existing content; how to keep your core files, themes and plugins updated; and also how to back that baby up and keep it secure. Because WordPress is so popular, it’s also a target for hackers.

Make sense?

If you want to know more, here’s an easy-to-read, comprehensive article on What is WordPress? and a good list of 6 reasons why WordPress is great for building your blog or business site.

One more thing you should know. If you Google “WordPress” you’ll find wordpress.org and wordpress.com. WordPress.org is where you can download the free software I told you all about. WordPress.com is where you can host a WordPress site, although there are lots of limitations. Here’s a great article on the difference between them.

On My Mind

“Even when we’re old, we’ll be changing.” Wisdom from an eighth-grader

Treat yourself like you would a good friend and tell yourself positive truths every day.

Does your office need a kitten library? My office would be 1,000 times better with a kitten library.

Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. Yes, that says half. Excellent article about financial insecurity and shame in middle-class Americans.

What’s on your mind today? Have a question about something you read or want to chat? Just hit reply – I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Like what you read? Share with a friend!