WordPress Blogging Guide | The Open Source Movement

WordPress Blogging Guide– WordPress is the most successful Content Management System and keeping the current trend in mind; the WordPress CMS will only increase its popularity.

According to w3techs, currently WordPress covers more than 60% of the CMS websites, and that totals the percentage of the CMS to 25% around the world. That’s a staggering domination over the world of CMS and the internet.

Today, we will go through the vital statistics of WordPress and know why it became one of the popular CMS in the World.

We will also visit the caves of the monkey, relishing the wonderful historical significance of WordPress in the pages of the Internet and the Open Source Movement.

WordPress Information and Resource Gallery!

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1. Reasons for the WordPress domination

There are many reasons why so many of you love and use WordPress, and the intensity with which it took the World by storm is not a surprise anymore. No one predicted that such a naive platform can make complex things so simple. Anyone can use the WordPress system to build a simple blog or a complex mobile application. Here are some more reasons why WordPress turned out to be such a massive hit.

a. WordPress is easy

When you first look at WordPress; it can charm you into its amazing user-friendliness and feel at home experience. It’s easy to use and can manage almost every complex task with the help of plugins and themes.

The whole ecosystem of WordPress is governed by two major elements; the themes and the plugins.

The theme plays the central stage of the WordPress ecosystem, providing a major set of core functionality, which can be further expanded by the plugins. Plugins are used to conquer any small to complex task related to WordPress web building as a whole.

b. WordPress is OpenSource

All of the home feelings come from the fact that the whole WordPress platform is OpenSource. And that provides it the right fue0l from all around the world to improve the platform.

Almost all the major bugs are patched instantly by the great OpenSource community that has kept the platform to the right standards.

The OpenSource community is also responsible for patching all the zero-day vulnerability, and that’s quite impressive of the community.

If the zero-day vulnerability is not fixed instantly, it can only lead to data losses for many sites and even bringing the whole site down altogether.

c. WordPress is SEO friendly

When we talk about Search Engines; the first name that comes into our mind is Google, followed by Bing and other search engines.

Search Engine is the core of the whole internet infrastructure, they combine all the tools and techniques so that you get hold of the best information out there.

But, with tools and techniques come the charm of rules and regulations. There is no fact denying that if any site wants to topple the first page, it has to be search engine friendly. There are many reasons WordPress is the best friend of search engines.

The WordPress Ecosystem is composed of perfect code that produces the right semantic markup. And, every search engine optimizer or junkie, completely knows the fact that Google or other search engines love semantic markup.

To improve the experience of WordPress users in the SEO department, there are tons of SEO plugins that improve the on-page SEO of the site. The Yoast SEO plugin is leading the race.

d. WordPress is easy to manage

Okie, I understand the fact that WordPress is highly functional and is full of features, and most of its features and functionality comes from the themes and plugin, built on top of the WordPress ecosystem.

But, what happens when everything gets installed? The after-installation experience is just as the installation experience, as described earlier.

The Dashboard offered by WordPress is a brilliant development by the WordPress team. It is sleek and intuitive, and almost all the tabs are easy to access and understand. But, the Dashboard is not that easy; it does carry a slight learning curve, and I must say everything around us takes its natural time, even the easiest of things.

e. WordPress is a safe platform

Easy to learn, check! Easy to install, check! WordPress has lots of themes and plugins, check! So, the next question that we should be asking ourselves, carries the real truth! Because without proper security and safety, there is no point in using the CMS in the first place.

All the features and functions fall apart when we see our data being stolen and our screen showing “HACKED BY XYZ”. Yea, it sucks!

Is WordPress safe and secure?

The answer is an astounding YES! WordPress is the most safest and secure CMS platform. No one wants to lose their secure data from the CMS.

The data can be anything critical ranging from customer login credentials to complex business logic. In today’s world, hacking is not only become a hobby but a crime that can make big companies, lose a huge amount of revenue.

f. WordPress Supports all the media type

WordPress CMS supports all the major media types, which include text, images, and videos. For a site to be successful, there are many criteria, and one of them is a great visual display. The right mixture of images and videos can bring a lot of customers and also prove vital for customer retention.

All the media types can easily be embedded with the help of the admin dashboard.

Now let’s move through time and re-live the history of WordPress.

2. History of WordPress

Understanding the history of WordPress is like a roller coaster ride, enriched with the defeat of one’s failure to the rise of the unknown platform that proved vital in the making of the websites around the globe.

It all started with a simple guy, Matt Mullenweg who was trying to solve his problem. WordPress’s idea was stuck in another project called b2cafelog, initially launched by Michel Valdrighi.

Michel Valdrighi abandoned his project because of his personal issues. On one bright day of April 2003, Matt Mullenweg decided to work on the b2cafelog and restart the project to reach new heights.

The Great Fork

Mike Mullenweg forked the original b2/cafelog from SourceForge and created a new branch. All of this is done in the presence of his friend Mike Little. The name WordPress was given by his other friend Christine Tremoulet, and the name survived the test of time.

The first official version of WordPress saw the light of day on May 27, 2003. The release was their first attempt and the present thanks them for the hard work put in the first release.

According to the WordPress official history page, WordPress saw an improvement in customizability by introducing plugins for the first time. Plugins are an integral part of the WordPress ecosystem as it provides additional functions without modifying the core.

WordPress 1.0 came to life in January 2014; codenamed “Davis”. The idea behind the naming scheme of WordPress release was the love of Jazz by its founder Mullenweg.

The love was also reflected by the inclusion of the “Hello Dolly” plugin and still, after 12 years the default binary installation of WordPress includes the plugin.

The Importance of WordPress 1.0

WordPress 1.0 was a major release by Mike and his friend, and it holds an important significance in the history of WordPress as this is the first time we had a glimpse of the greatness of the WordPress platform.

The reason was the inclusion of features such as Multiple categories, upgradeable capabilities including plugin, comment moderation and the most important of all, the search engine friendly permalinks.

The Rise of WordPress

There was not much in WordPress at that time, but Movable Type, another popular CMS decided to change the pricing structure, and that opened a huge opportunity for the WordPress market.

The users of Movable Type decided to change to WordPress and that started the growth of WordPress as the leading CMS.

During the year 2005, Mullenweg shifted his focus to CNET blogging system. During the same time, he came up with one of the most popular plugins of WordPress, the Akismet plugin, which protects a blog from spam comments.

The Glorious Funding

Mike released himself from CNET and decided to start his own company Automattic. The inception of Automattic was welcome by a staggering $1.10 million Series A funding. A lot of investors chipped in the Series A funding including CNET, Radar Partners, True Ventures and more.

It took 2 years of Automattic to raise 2nd funding. It raised a massive $29.5 million in a Series B. All of this happened in January 2008. Companies like the New York Times, Polaris, Radar Partners and True Ventures invested in Automattic.

The last funding was a recent event, and it received a crucial $160m of Series C funding. And, this surely changed the fortunes of Automattic as it confirmed that the evaluation of the company over $1 Billion.

The Series C funding was done by tech giants such as Yahoo, Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

The Current Situation

WordPress is dominating and will continue to do so in the year 2019. Chances are that it will make other players in the market take drastic steps regarding their market policies.

Historical trends of how WordPress grew in all these years look promising.  We can see a consistent increase in the WordPress market share from the day of its inception. From, what I care about is that other platforms should improvise so that there is healthy competition between them.

3. What WordPress is still lagging? Points worth pondering

I am no technical wizard, and the past few years of my online journey, I have kept WordPress close to my heart. There are many reasons on how WordPress should improve its journey.

WordPress.org sites should have complete customizability ON and not the other way around. WordPress is open-source but for users who are new to WordPress should lag behind the competition by investing a lot of money and then unlocking the capacity that WordPress offers.

More SEO friendly. I know that you will tell that WordPress is already SEO friendly but wouldn’t it be better if they implement all the SEO features directly into WordPress?

Yes, I understand that it may cause bloatware and WordPress functions best with the help of plugins. But, there is always a way to improve on this and I am sure good engineering will keep everything in check.

A better WordPress Affiliate Community. As a WordPress writer, I do my best to take care of every theme or plugin I review on the websites I write for. I use my website for experimenting these products either by purchasing those themes/plugins or by using the copy that the owner provides for a genuine review. But there are tons of affiliate websites on the internet that drags down the true nature of the themes by praising almost every other theme out there.

CopyWriting with honesty is what I am talking about.

4. Understanding the WordPress EcoSystem

The WordPress Ecosystem is complex and thrives heavily on the participants from all over the world. And, why I praise WordPress over other platforms is the number of jobs it has created in the past few years.

There are tons of copywriters, developers, designers and marketers who work tirelessly to generate amazing things in their respective fields.

The theme builders are the biggest part of the WordPress Ecosystem, followed by the plugin developers. The main players in theme WordPress theme builders are Envato, ThemeForest, WooThemes, StudioPress, iThemes, Mojo Themes, Elegant Themes and many more.

The ecosystem of WordPress is strong that almost every single day a new theme or plugin comes along(free and premium) from both single developers or from big theme developers.

The community support is superb and updates of plugin and themes are almost on a regular basis. Popular themes and plugins are updated more compared to the small developers as they have much better resources at disposal.

When you think that the themes itself offers great functionality and suppresses the core WordPress functionality then you haven’t thought about the plugin and their role in bringing sanity to the WordPress ecosystem.

So, plugins are important? They are important because of the modularity it provides to the WordPress ecosystem.

Plugins are smaller than themes and carry more functional importance. There are tons of plugin customization available online for free. Also, if you find yourself on the bright side of coding; you will be able to write some appealing plugins out of the ether.

5. Why Developers and Designers are so Important to WordPress EcoSystem

If you are an online freelancing then there are chances that you already know the famous online freelancing websites such as ODesk, Fiverr, Elance, and others. And it’s not tough to spot the frequency of WordPress projects that keep pouring in every minute or so.

There are tons of WordPress developers and designers. The scope of WordPress development is huge, and that’s why people are specializing in one aspect or another in WordPress development.

According to the current industry scenario, a developer can engage in development in two different ways; one way is to utilize their knowledge by doing custom WordPress projects awarded to them by their clients, and the second option is to build plugin and themes and sell them in the WordPress marketplace. Many developers choose to do both and earn a handsome amount of money from their endeavors.

In short, there is no shortage of WordPress jobs and neither the talent to serve the demand of work.

Role of Copywriters

CopyWriting is a tricky job; convincing the reader to buy the product with the help of only the words and images can be challenging, but many people don’t recognize the value CopyWriting carries with it.

WordPress CopyWriting is on the rise as more and more affiliate websites are surfacing lately. The affiliate market is big, and there are tons of money flowing in both directions.

There are tons of CopyWriters who specialize in WordPress related products and churn out words at the speed of bullet trains. With the help of WordPress, many writers earn their livelihood.

Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting is an integral part of the WordPress Ecosystem. Understanding Managed WordPress hosting is important for webmasters to completely unleash the power of WordPress.

So, do you need Managed WordPress Hosting?

Yes, if your site receives a lot of traffic and needs to maintain the server when an article goes viral. Managed WordPress hosting is not new and many famous hosting players such as Bluehost, Pagely, FlyWheel, WPEngine and more. You might want to skip Managed WordPress Hosting if you are just starting your online venture.

Managed WordPress Hosting offers a wide range of features such as enhanced security, 24/7, dedicated support and more.

5. Learning WordPress

There are two kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don’t.

And WordPress brings the party to both the sections. Being a CMS, user-friendliness is the top priority of the WordPress developers. Still, there is a slight learning curve for a non-technical audience. There are tons of resources to choose from and learn from.

Similarly, for the technical audience, the story can be slightly different; there are tons of different concepts that relate to the core development process of themes and plugins. The good news is that the internet houses tons of tutorials for more advanced learners.

The starting point is the official WordPress Learning article. We will go through the depths of available resources, so hang with me till the end.

The Resource Gallary Menu

1. WordPress Themes
2. WordPress Plugins
3. WordPress Books
4. WordPress Hostings
5. Useful WordPress Sites
6. WordPress Tutorials
7. WordPress Resource Articles
8. WordPress Theme and Plugin Stores

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The Resource Gallery

We all love to share resources with each other and it can improve human relations. WordPress offers ample of that.

We at SourecWP care a lot about our reader’s time and make sure that you are always updated with useful WordPress resources. We have listed all the top-notch resources for you to take advantage of this great platform.

Let’s get started and not waste any time.

WordPress Themes

StudioPress: StudioPress is the creator of the super-popular Genesis framework, if you want to create a modern, quick, and SEO-friendly website on the WordPress platform you must consider Genesis as one of your preferred platforms.

Genesis is a child theme-based framework, so you will need Genesis Framework and a child theme to run the show perfectly, the best part is that we have already listed the best Genesis Child Themes which you can use to find your preferred design.

ElegantThemes: One of the most popular and widely used WordPress product stores, ElegantThemes offers you some of the top-notch WordPress themes and plugins which you can use for your site.

They have related some of the best and highly talked about WordPress resources in the recent past. Their Divi Theme/[; took the community by storm and plugins like Monarch for social sharing and Bloom for email marketing took their quality to a new level altogether.

1. WordPress Plugins
2. WordPress Books
3. WordPress Hostings

Useful WordPress Sites

1. WordPress Theme Generator: WordPress Theme Generator is a basic tool to generate a theme, without any coding experience whatsoever. A must-try for anyone new to WordPress.

WordPress Tutorials

WordPress Resource Articles

1. WordPress PSD Framework: The link contains a simple PSD that can be used in the development of the WordPress theme. The PSD contains all the basic elements that are needed for the development of a basic WordPress theme.

2. WordPress Codex: The WordPress Codex is the official place to start your journey. It includes every piece of information that you might need in your journey with WordPress.

3.WordPress Theme and Plugin Stores