Understanding WordPress for business through analogy: First in a series

If you Google WordPress, you’ll get About 641,000,000 results that will take you deep into the technical details of this very popular open source blogging tool. Most will be technical in nature, filled with Jargon, and may leave you confused and understanding WordPress less than before you started searching.  In this ongoing series, I’ll explain some of the high-level features of WordPress that are important to a business decision-maker, rather than to a developer, programmer or hands-on webmaster.

The WordPress.org site expresses that “WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”

For many busy business readers who are not interested in learning to be a web designer/developer, exploring further can quickly lead to an Alice in Wonderland discussion of Themes, Widgets and Plug-ins. Understanding WordPress for business isn’t the same as for programming.

One example of simple explanation get’s pretty technical pretty quick: WordPress is a content management system you can use to create a website, a blog or both. Huh?

As business owners, what’s most important is to understand the value of WordPress to their business website needs. In this series, I’ll break down parts of WordPress over several posts. Today I’ll use a brief analogy to describe WordPress:

Less like baking a souffle, more like making a hero sandwich

WordPress is a software tool to make your business website easier to create and manage. The traditional way of building a Web Site involves a recipe of custom programming and design for your Site. Like making a Souffle, you are building from scratch. If something goes wrong, correcting it can be pretty involved.

In contrast, WordPress software provides a standardized way to combine components that are available off-the shelf and can be combined to create simple or complex Web Sites.

Some examples of WordPress Themes that are available for purchase on the Web.

Like a sandwich, you choose the bread (the WordPress Theme) that holds it all together, and gives the overall look to your site, just you’d choose rye bread vs. Sourdough. You then fill it with meat (your content), and add the trimmings (plug-ins and widgets) to finish off your site with the features you need to make it the way you want. Do you want to support video, add a widget, like adding pickles Do you want to shut off comments or feedback? You turn a feature off, like holding the mayo. If you don’t like the look of the theme, change the flavor by switching to a new theme.

WordPress allows the experience of visiting a site to be different with by changing themes. But all your content will remain in the site. Depending on the theme you’ve selected, it could be moved or re-prioritized. But you didn’t lose the content.

Today, I used the souffle/sandwich analogy. With my next installment, I’ll talk about what WordPress Themes are, so that by the time we’re done, by using simple analogies, you’ll be understanding WordPress for business, too.

Like this post?  Read more: WordPress for businsess Part 2

That’s my take on this. What else would you like to read about?