What is WordPress?

WordPress is an open source website creation tool based on PHP and MySQL. In simpler terms, it’s an easy and powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS). WordPress was used by around 27.5% of the top 10 million websites as of February 2017. WordPress is the most popular blogging system on the Web, supporting more around 60 million websites.
It is is free to use. This is because it is an open source tool. This means anyone can contribute to the improvement of this tool. You can choose from a wide of plugins, widgets, and themes to build any type of website that you want.

How to Get Started on WordPress?

As mentioned above, WordPress is absolutely free. You can be download it from WordPress.org for self-hosted installations or use it as a hosted service via WordPress.com.

Also Read: Create a free blog on BlogSpot and WordPress – Step by Step Guide

Here are some of the things to consider:
Themes
You can install different themes and switch between them. Themes let you change the view and functionality of your website without editing the code or site content. You must choose at least one theme, and all themes should be designed using WordPress standards with structured PHP, valid HTML, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). A lot of free themes are available in the directory. You also have the option of creating and customizing your own theme.
Plugins
The plugin architecture lets you extend the features and functionality of your website. There are around 40,501 plugins available. They all have custom functions and features which lets you tailor them according to your needs. They range from search engine optimization, to client portals used to display private information to logged in users, to content management systems, to content displaying features, such as the addition of widgets and navigation bars.

Also Read: Installing WordPress theme – Step by Step guide
Widgets
They add additional content and features to your website’s sidebars. You do not need any coding experience to handle widgets. They are easy to add, rearrange, and remove. The widget location is determined by your theme.

Mobiles
Applications exist for WebOS, Android, iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. These applications allow you to handle your wordpress website from your mobile device. However the options are limited. Hey allow some basic functionality like adding new posts and pages, commenting, moderating comments, replying to comments, and viewing stats.

Why Use WordPress?

First of all, as mentioned before, WordPress is free. Moreover, since it’s an open source tool, its constantly being improved by people from all around the world. So, in case there is a bug, you can always be sure that someone is working on it.
WordPress is also very user friendly. You do not have to be a coder to be able to design a website or start a blog on WordPress. Anyone with basic computer knowledge can easily use WordPress.
It is very flexible and extensible. You have so many plugins and themes to choose from. Any change, like starting a poll on your website, is just a click away.
If you experience problems, there is a lot of help available. Not only can you find a lot of tutorials for trouble shooting, you can also contact WordPress designers and developers to help you. Perhaps the best place to get support is WordPress Forum.
It is also SEO friendly. This ensures your website’s visibility to target audience.
WP also gives you control and command. You can even import data from other services like Tumblr and Blogger. And you can also export your data to other websites. It  doesn’t limit you in anyway.

Promoting Your  Website/Blog

Once you have setup your WordPress blog/website, it is important to promote it. Harness the power of social media to get the word out about your website. It is a good idea to add social sharing icons on each of your blog post to allow visitors to share content on their own social media accounts.
Rank higher on search engines by optimizing the titles and descriptions of your blog. WordPress offers a lot of SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and All In On SEO. This will create SEO-friendly meta descriptions and tile tags for all your posts.
Ensure your meta descriptions and title tags contain relevant keywords, are readable for humans and accurately describe your content.
Another way is to create an email list and add subscribers to send them to. The subscribers in your list may forward your share you email, which will bring more traffic to your website.
You should also update your blog regularly so that readers always have something to read. If you get inactive, you might lose your regular visitors.

The Final Word

WordPress is a very powerful tool, used by millions of successful websites. Once you get a hang of it, and learn about it in detail, you can do a lot with it. Appealing themes, appropriate plug ins, useful widgets, and engaging content are a surefire way to make your website a hit.