WordPress is a high quality, open source blog publishing application. The software was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL. It is the official successor of b2 (also known as cafelog).
WordPress is renowned for, and advertises, its “five-minute installation” process, to highlight the fact that the software is simple to install. At the same time, WordPress has a very impressive set of features.
The software has a rich plugin architecture which enables users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come provided. There are many free WordPress themes available. Additionally, there are plugins, which users can add to a WordPress blog to enhance its functionality, such as image galleries, statistics, anti-spam, etc. WordPress has a built-in search tool and archive. A comments tool is also included in the basic installation package.
WordPress uses a homegrown comment-spam prevention system called Akismet. WordPress has a large supporting community.
Key Features
- Instant publishing (no rebuilding).
- Templating system, including widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code.
- Non-crufty URLs.
- WordPress Pages allowing static and dynamic pages.
- WordPress Links.
- Themable.
- Plugin support.
- Password protected posts.
- XML-RPC interface.
- Workflow.
- Typographical niceties – convert plain ASCII into typographically correct XHTML entities.
- Intelligent text formatting.
- Multiple authors.
- Bookmarklets.
- Full user registration.
- Comment pingback support with spam protection.
- Import from other content management systems.
- Cross-blog communication tools.
- Full standards compliance.
Website: wordpress.org
Support: WordPress Codex
Developer: WordPress
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

WordPress is written in PHP. Learn PHP with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| PHP-Based Web Content Management Systems | |
|---|---|
| WordPress | Create a beautiful website, blog, or app |
| Drupal | Platform and content management system written in PHP |
| Joomla! | Award-winning system to build Web sites and powerful applications |
| Grav | Super fast modern CMS |
| Pico | Blazing speed, flexibility, and a lightweight footprint |
| TYPO3 | Small to midsize enterprise-class content management system |
| MODX | Powerful framework to deploy and secure websites and web applications |
| SilverStripe | Flexible, open source programming framework, and CMS |
| ProcessWire | Polished content management system (CMS) and framework (CMF) |
| Concrete | CMS, CMF and easy to use Web Builder |
| Textpattern | Flexible, elegant and easy-to-use open source system |
| XOOPS | eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System |
| Fork | User friendly environment to build, monitor and update your website |
| Winter | PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content |
| Bolt CMS | Based on Silex and Symfony components, uses Twig |
| Contao | (formerly TYPOlight) Specializes in accessibility (back end and front end) |
| Backdrop | Fork of Drupal |
| e107 | Portal or CMS using PHP and MySQL |
| ImpressCMS | Community developed Content Management System |
| ExpressionEngine | Mature, flexible, secure content management system |
| Pluck | Focuses on user friendliness; lets anyone manage a website |
| Lavalite | CMS built with Laravel |
| Geeklog | Very extensible system with good support for blogging |
| eZ Platform | Professional PHP application framework with advanced CMS |
| CMS Made Simple | Designed for simple stable content sites |
| b2evolution | Highly integrated CMS |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Blog Software | |
|---|---|
| WordPress | Elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system |
| Joomla | Award-winning system to build Web sites and powerful online applications |
| Drupal | Platform and content management system written in PHP |
| Apache Roller | Java-based blog server |
| Dotclear | Blog publishing application popular in French speaking countries |
| Geeklog | PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content |
| Concrete | Complex websites made easy |
| Movable Type | Popular blogging, or web publishing platform |
| TextPattern | Flexible, elegant and easy-to-use |
| b2evolution | Multilingual, multiuser, multi-blog engine |
| Serendipity | PHP-powered weblog engine |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

