Whats WordPress?

Hey

Could somebody explain to me what word press is and how it works please. Is it similar to XHTML? Whats are it's advantages and disadvantages?

Thanks everyone

Danny322

WordPress is a php based blogging software, and it requires a MySQL database as the back end in order to store data.

Check out wordpress.org

With a little tweaking it can also be used as a CMS for your website.

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WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.
The latest release of WordPress is version 2.3.2, released on 29 December2007. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

History

b2\cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog was the precursor to WordPress. b2\cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2000 blogs as of May 2003. It was also written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Though WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development.
WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.
In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package was changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress – causing a marked, and continuing, growth in WordPress's popularity.

Releases


WordPress's administration interface

WordPress releases are named after well known jazz musicians. WordPress 1.2 was codenamed Mingus (after Charles Mingus).
WordPress 1.5 was released mid-February 2005 and codenamed Strayhorn. It added a range of new vital features. One such is being able to manage static pages. This allows content pages to be created and managed outside the normal blog chronology and has been the first step away from being simple blog management software to becoming a full content management system. Another is the new template/theme system, which allows users to easily activate and deactivate "skins" for their sites. WordPress was also equipped with a new default template (codenamed Kubrick[3]) designed by Michael Heilemann.
WordPress 2.0 was released in December 2005 and codenamed Duke. This version added rich editing, better administration tools, image uploading, faster posting, an improved import system, and completely overhauled the back end. WordPress 2.0 also offered various improvements to plugin developers.
On 22 January2007, another major upgrade, WordPress 2.1, codenamed Ella, was released. In addition to correcting security issues, version 2.1 featured a redesigned interface and enhanced editing tools (including integrated spell check and auto save), improved content management options, and a variety of code and database optimizations.
WordPress 2.2, codenamed Getz, was released on 16 May2007. Version 2.2 featured widget support for templates, updated Atom feed support, and speed optimizations. Wordpress 2.2 was initially slated to have a revised taxonomy system for categories, as well as tags, but a proposed revision led to the feature being held back from release.
WordPress 2.3, codenamed Dexter, was released 24 September2007. Version 2.3 features native tagging support, new taxonomy system for categories, easy notification of updates as well as other interface improvements. 2.3 also fully supports Atom 1.0 along with the publishing protocol. WordPress 2.3 also includes some much needed security fixes.

Vulnerabilities

BlogSecurity currently maintains a list of WordPress vulnerabilities.
In January 2007, many high profile Search engine optimization (SEO) blogs, as well as many low-profile commercial blogs featuring Adsense were targeted and attacked with a WordPress exploit.
A separate vulnerability on one of the project site's web servers allowed an attacker to introduce exploitable code in the form of a back door to some downloads of WordPress 2.1.1. The 2.1.2 release addressed this issue; an advisory released at the time advised all users to upgrade immediately.
In May 2007, a study revealed that 98% of WordPress blogs being run are exploitable.
In a June 2007 interview, Stefen Esser, the founder of the PHP Security Response Team, spoke critically of WordPress's security track record, citing problems with the application's architecture that make it unnecessarily difficult to write code that is secure against SQL injection vulnerabilities, as well as other problems.

Multi-blogging

WordPress supports one weblog per installation, though multiple concurrent copies may be run from different directories if configured to use separate database tables.
Wordpress MultiUser (Wordpress MU) is a fork of WordPress created to allow simultaneous blogs to exist within one installation. Wordpress MU makes it possible for any one with a website to host their own blogging community, control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. Wordpress MU adds eight new data tables for each blog.
Lyceum is another enterprise-edition of Wordpress. Lyceum, unlike WordPress MU, stores all of its information in a set number of database tables. Notable communities that use Lyceum are TeachFor.Us (Teach For America teachers' blogs), BodyBlogs and the Hopkins Blogs.

Developers

WordPress development is led by Ryan Boren and Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg and Mike Little were co-founders of the project.
The contributing developers include:

• Dougal Campbell
• Mark Jaquith
• Donncha O'Caoimh
• Andy Skelton
• Michel Valdrighi
• Peter Westwood

Though developed much by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic, where some of WordPress's main contributing developers are employees.
WordPress is also in part developed by its community, among which are the WP testers, a group of people that volunteer time and effort to testing each release. They have early access to nightly builds, Beta versions and Release Candidates. Upgrading to these versions, they can find and report errors to a special mailing list, or the project's Trac tool.

Sponsored themes

On 10 July2007, following a discussion on the WordPress ideas forum and a post by Mark Ghosh in his blog Weblog Tools Collection, Matt Mullenweg announced that the official WordPress theme directory at http://themes.wordpress.net would no longer host themes containing sponsored links.Although this move was criticised by designers and users of sponsored themes, it was applauded by some WordPress users who consider such themes to be spam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress

It can be used as a blogging system, or write articles, latest news etc.

I use word press on my personal site and it's top banana.

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My blog is wordpress. I uploaded a theme and then made it mine by making changes. (of course)

Is wordpress free?

how do you use it, do you upload files to your server and edit them from there?

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It is free. You can either go to wordpress and get a blog straight away. It will be
http://unitedcraig.wordpress.com or something like that.

The other way is putting it on your own domain. I usually, add the domain to my existing host (If I have a mysql database left. If not I up the account to add one). Then I go to Fantastico. Not all hosts have this but a lot do. Some have auto install. Anyway, I go to Fantastico and click "install". Then it asks you if you want a folder. If you have a mysql on your root, you need to put it in a folder. Mine is http://webpreppro.com/blog/ because my cart, which uses a mysql, is http://webpreppro.com/cart/.

Basically, it takes 30 seconds. Really. Then you search through all the skins/themes and find one with a layout you like or can manipulate. I picked one three columns. I can't remember how I uploaded a skin but it really was super easy. I got it, unpacked it, uploaded in to a folder and they you can log in and just choose it. I

After than you can customize it. How much you can customize depends on your skill level working with php programs. I download a few files like the .css style sheet and I usually back it up first. I don't download all the files to dreamweaver, just the ones I might want to edit.

Thanks

Might have a look into this when i'v got time, working on a second website at the moment, so when iv got that up and running you never no lol

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You can make a dandy website with WP, too. Complete with that content management window clients love so much. And it indexes better in searches than most CMS.

they have two different website, wordpress.org and wordpress.com. I went to wordpress.com to make a blog. Which is their official website?

both. One is a development site and one is a general site.

I'm using wordpress for 2 of my blogs.. works really simple. I like it..

WordPress is a simple and perfect blogging software

I use it on some blogs, nice

Its one of the best ones available. But there are others. Joomla is one that springs to mind. Try them all out