Ten Things You Likely Don’t Know About WordPress!
So you think you know quite a bit about WordPress? You’re a master of how to set it up, build a website, and you know a thing or two about WordPress itself: like who owns it, who develops it, who controls it, etc, etc. Well, with a subject as big as this, let me tell you: there’s ALWAYS more to learn!
Here’s a number of things we expect you don’t already know…
Ten Things You Likely Don’t Yet Know About WordPress:
Direct link to watch the video over on YouTube.
– (note: video credits to Topher DeRosia – creator of HeroPress)
Video Transcript:
Hi! This is Topher with WinningWP. In this video, I’m going to introduce you to things you likely don’t know about WordPress. Let’s take a look at the first one. Number one, it’s owned by everyone and no one at the same time. Let me show you what I mean. We’re here at wordpress.org, and if you go down to the bottom of the page, there’s a link here called license GPL version two. The GPL is the license under which WordPress is released. And basically it says that anyone who wants to can take the source code, do anything they want with it, and then release it back out to the world. If they release it back out to the world after changing it, they have to release it under the same license, so that anyone else can take their changes and change them even more. This means that you, personally, can download WordPress, change it, and release it as your own software if you wish. You own it. But by the same token, everybody else does, too. And so that’s why I say everybody owns it and no one owns it all at the same time. Number two, it was started by two guys working together, Mike and Matt. Here’s the Wikipedia article for WordPress, and it says that on May th, , Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released WordPress. A little while before this release date, Matt had done a forum post suggesting the idea of making a new blog system. And Mike wrote back to him and said, hey, Matt, if you’re serious about that, I’d like to help out. And so the two of them got together and made WordPress. Number three, it was based on an earlier blogging system. Mike and Matt did not start from scratch. They based WordPress on another project called b. It had the fundamentals of what they wanted, but they wanted to take it a different direction. And since b was available under the GPL license, they were able to take it, change it, and release it as their own. Number four, you don’t have to use posts or have a blog. You could just use pages. WordPress is often thought of as just a blogging platform. But you don’t have to use it for blogging at all. This is a WordPress website, and it has these pages, and none of them are a blog. It’s just a plain old website. Number five, WordPress powers nearly % of the entire World Wide Web. Again here at the WordPress Wikipedia article, we see here, WordPress was used by more than .% of the top million websites as of January . That’s an enormous slice of the web. Number six, wordpress.org has over , free plugins available. We’re here on wordpress.org under the plugins section, and it says, extend your WordPress experience with , plugins. One more interesting stat, I actually made this slide one week ago, and the number was ,. So in one week, over , plugins have been added. Number seven, anyone who wants to may create an account on wordpress.org and edit the documentation without restriction. Let me show you how that works. This website is called make.wordpress.org, and it’s for making WordPress. And there are a wide variety of areas that you can contribute, but one of them is documentation. If you want to contribute to documentation, I recommend reading through this page. And they have regular meetings once a week. But when you get right down to it, all you have to do is register an account, and you can go to any documentation page, and when you’re logged in, there will be an edit link. And you simply click it, and start editing documentation. So if you find a flaw in the documentation, you can correct it. If you find a lack in the documentation, you can create it. Again, if you really wanna get into it, I recommend becoming part of the team, which happens merely by showing up at the meetings. Number eight, anyone who wants to may submit code to WordPress core for consideration. We’re back here at make.wordpress.org, and one of the top items here is core. There are many dozens of people who contribute code to every single release of WordPress. And it’s not an elite core of employees somewhere. It’s just people. It’s just volunteers. If you’re interested in contributing to core, you can click here to learn more about it. You can create a ticket for bugs. Here’s a list of good first bugs if you want to get started. And this team also has weekly meetings, so that if you need help contributing, you can get it. It’s an important point to realize that WordPress is not built by an elite team somewhere else. WordPress is built by normal people just like you. And if you want to be involved, you are welcome. Number nine, there’s a mobile app for WordPress. Let me show you. This is wordpress.org/mobile, and there’s an app for iOS and another one for Android. And you can connect it either to your account on wordpress.com or to your own private WordPress install. You can use it to create posts, upload images, manage comments, pretty much anything that you can do with WordPress. Number , there’s at least one training conference, or WordCamp, happening somewhere in the world every single weekend of the year. Check this out. This page is central.wordcamp.org, and this is where WordCamps are scheduled. And here you can see the upcoming WordCamps just in this one month. But if you click more WordCamps, you can see a map where they’re all over the world, and you can see them projected out for many months in advance. WordCamps are great places to learn about WordPress. They’re very inexpensive to attend. They’re everywhere, so there’s probably one relatively near to you. And they’re very welcoming, comfortable places to be. So there you have it, things you likely didn’t know about WordPress. If you have other interesting tidbits about WordPress that maybe people don’t know, please leave them in the comments below. If you’d like to learn more about WordPress, check out winningwp.com.
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