Presentation By Alex Ogden 1

What is WordPress? Free, Open-Source software created in 2003 Websites, Blogs and Portfolios 22% of Websites Easy to use, no programming required! Free themes for those who are not familiar with coding. 2

The History of WordPress 2003, two users of b2/cafelog, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little decided to improvements on the platform they used 27 th May, 2003 – WordPress officially released Very well received May WordPress 1.2 released - Plug-in architecture December WordPress 2.0 released - “Admin Dashboard” 3

Why WordPress? Free Easy to use Open Source/ Community Driven Highly customizable No programming skill required As detailed as you want it to be Professional looking Websites, Portfolios and Blogs 4

Features and Functionality Contact information Search Engine Optimised – More visitors/More ad revenue You can add menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus and so on Almost completely customizable Can be used for a wide range of things 5

Statistics Over 23% of the websites use WordPress 17 posts every second 14.7 billion monthly site visits 5.5 million comments per month WordPress million downloads 6

Examples of WordPress use BBC America The New York Times Tech Crunch The New Yorker EBay Walking Dead – AMC Wall Street Journal Law Blog 7

Cost and Benefits Free, Open-Source Hosting can be paid for (monthly fee) Self-Hosting (free but requires server) 8

Pros and Cons Pros Free Easy to use No coding knowledge Easy to maintain Plug-ins and Themes Search Engine Friendly Visual-based interface for editing/managing Hassle-free Cons Not as customizable as having coders May not suit your needs Open-Source, code online, easy for hackers to find security holes Lack of Flexibility, made for small content sites Plug-ins may not be up-to-date WordPress sites can seem to look quite similar despite themes Generic Code causes loading slowdowns 9

My Recommendations Who should use it? Only for small sites/personal use – not large companies Good for bloggers Excellent for Portfolios Theme/Plug-in recommendations Bizmo (Theme) – Free, simple and good looking Twenty-Fifteen (Theme) Contact Form to (Plug-In) – allows for contact page 10

Summary Everyone should give it a go If its too simple, learn to code/find someone who can code Large Organisations – Try it but may not suit needs Great for building Portfolios/Blogs Easy to maintain Clean and Simple UI Everyone can make a website Quick to make something with Too quick to be personalised 11