The biggest misconception about the creation of a web site is that professional expertise is an absolute requirement to produce a commercial quality experience for the visitor.  To put that myth to rest, “There’s an App for that” and it is called The WordPress Content Management System Platform.  WordPress is web software that provides a complete off-the-shelf, ready to go site that one can easily manage completely through any web browser such as Internet Explorer, FireFox, or Chrome.

WordPress is billed as being a personal publishing system, which enables users to create, post, and manage content – things that you write about, details about yourself or your company, product information, photographs – in short – any kind of content you see on any other web site can usually be managed in a WordPress site without “professional” help.

It is called a Platform because it provides a framework to which one can choose from thousands of little pieces of code called “Plug-Ins” to extend out the feature set. Plug-In’s are created by army of independent software developers in the WordPress Community.

Web Designers can create ready to install “Themes” which allow users to seamlessly change the look and feel of a website using templates without altering any of the content of the site as easily as one changes their shirt at the click of a button. (Click here to see a number of Free Themes available.)

Examples of Plug-In’s include Search Engine Optimization tools, Site Backup, Event Calendars, Weather Reports, Picture Gallery’s, Ratings and Surveys and much more.  (Check out the WordPress Plug-in Listings here.)   Many users will only need just a few Plug-in’s and WordPress includes some popular one’s by default.  However, there are thousands to choose from to do things that previously required the expertise of a programmer to create custom code.

Since WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems, many Web Hosting companies offer it by default as part of their packages.   In fact, there are a number of companies that are dedicated to hosting WordPress sites exclusively.  Price is no longer a barrier as WordPress hosting is available for less than $5 a month for small sites.

Learn about WordPress
– http://www.wordpress.org

WordPress Plug-in Listing
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins

WordPress Free Theme Listing
– http://wordpress.org/extend/themes