WordPress is an open source blog tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It’s often customized into a Content Management System (CMS).[4] It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14% of Alexa Internet‘s “top 1 million” websites.[5]
It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg[1] as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of February 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 32.5 million times.[6] WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.[7]
WordPress has a web template system using a template processor. Users can re-arrange widgets without editing PHP or HTML code; they can also install and switch between themes. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations. WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters are also included, providing standardized formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes). WordPress also supports the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.
Native applications exist for Android,[8] iPhone/iPod Touch,[9] iPad,[10] Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry[11] which provide access to some of the features in the WordPress Admin panel and work with WordPress.com and many WordPress.org blogs.
Awards
In 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award.[18]
In 2009 WordPress won the best Open Source CMS Award.[19]
In 2010 WordPress won the Hall of Fame CMS category in the 2010 Open Source Awards.[20]
In 2011 WordPress won the Open Source Web App of the Year Award at The Critters.[21][22]
