WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) based on PHP scripts and MySQL databases. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to as ‘themes’. WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as a platform for blogging but it is now much more. It provides a complete web building environment. WordPress is used by more than 60 million websites, including 33.6% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2019, so it is one of the most popular content management system (CMS) solutions in use.
To function, WordPress has to be installed on a web server that supports PHP and MySQL. WordPress.com is WordPress’ own hosting service, but it can be run on any other host that supports it.
WordPress is open source software, which means that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance its source code. This has the benefit that a wide variety of developers can contribute to it and create add-ons. However, because of this, and because it is such a popular system, WordPress is a favourite target for hackers. It is therefore essential that security software is in place and that a site’s WordPress code, and the various additional software programmes that are in use, are updated regularly. Your web designer should offer to do this for you and if not, why not?!