1. Who Owns WordPress?

No-one. WordPress is ‘open-source’ which means that all the computer code that drives it is written by volunteer programmers around the world.

One of the founders was Matt Mullenweg, himself a programmer, who couldn’t understand why simple blogging software didn’t exist. He and a group of friends decided to write their own and give it away. This is how WordPress was born.

Now this may sound crazy if you’ve got a name that sounds like Bill Gates, but this is what programmers like to do. They like being creative, writing clever programs and changing the world. People who have mind-numbing day jobs writing programs for mind-numbing big corporations like to spend their spare time writing software for WordPress where they can stretch their imagination, test the limits of the technology and collaborate with like-minded others around the world. And do it for nothing.

The motto you see on a lot of WordPress screens is ‘Code is Poetry’. That says it all.

2. What’s The Difference Between wordpress.com and wordpress.org?

Wordpress.com is a free service where you can have a WordPress blog on computers hosted by WordPress. This free service offers limited capabilities compared to wordpress.org but that can be all that’s needed if you just want a simple, personal blog and you want someone else to provide all the infrastructure.

The main difference, however, is that wordpress.org can be used for e-commerce and for blogs where you want more than the basic functionality of wordpress.com. The wordpress.org software is still free, but you have to install it on your own server (which you can hire from a web hosting company) and hang it on your own domain. This then becomes your ‘property’ - a web-based asset that you own and which you create and maintain independently.

3. What’s The Difference In WordPress Between A Post And A Page?

A post is a chronological entry on your blog, traditionally used to record daily or weekly or occasional news. In a conventional blog design, posts appear on the front page, latest at the top and scrolling down the page to dispay previous posts in the order in which they were posted. The oldest posts eventually disappear off the bottom of the page and get shunted off into the archive.

A page is a static entry which you can use to display something that you want permanently accessible to your visitor. Pages are usually accessed via a link, usually somewhere in the blog’s sidebar. When that page is displayed it’s the only page displayed on the screen.

If you want, a page can be used as a fixed front page of the blog to replace the scrolling series of posts. That’s how this blog is organized.

4. Can I Have A WordPress Blog And A Website On The Same Domain?

Yes. What you would do is to have your website located in the root directory, as normal, exactly as standard, with an index.* file. Then, for the blog, you create a sub-directory (sub-folder) called ‘blog’ (or whatever you like) and you install WordPress in that sub-folder.

Your website URL would then be www.yourdomain.com and your blog URL would be www.yourdomain.com/blog.

But why have a website AND a blog? WordPress is now so powerful that you can use it as a complete content management system. Think about it!