WordPress

Wordpress is a popular blogging platform, and can be used as a simple content management system. It allows for both plugins (of which there are currently over 3,400 listed on the WordPress plugin directory), and themes.

Themes are made up of a set of files, with each different page type stored as a separate HTML file. The page types can be special pages for the front page, error messages, searching, and more. Each of these HTML files will contain small amounts of PHP programming logic in order to display the WordPress controlled content contained in the database.

Along with all of the HTML files, wordpress themes generally contain CSS files, Javascript files, and images. All of these files are used to format your content to match the design, and to get the correct interactive behavoirs for links, menus, and other elements.

Plugins can allow your WordPress site to do things that it was not originally capable of, such as adding a photo or video gallery, allowing users to rate content, or allowing users to send a link to the viewed article to a friend via e-mail. Plugins for WordPress are developed using PHP, and can integrate with both the public site and the administrative interface.

In the words of wordpress.org: "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time."

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