For those that are yet unfamiliar, WordPress is arguably the most popular open-source blogging/CMS web based software available. It allows a web site owner to easily manage the content of their site themselves without always requiring the services of a web designer or programmer. The term “open-source” means that the underlying software code and HTML/CSS formatting are distributed free of charge to the end user and may be freely modified to suit their needs.

Now, having said the above, the installation of WordPress on your web site does take some web design tools and an understanding of setting up a mySQL database, FTP (file transfer protocol), and basic HTML editing. Furthermore, to change the layout of your WordPress site will require advanced knowledge of PHP/HTML coding. If you have these skills – GREAT, if not, you will need the services of someone that does. Fortunately, WordPress has a huge community of users and many designers/developers available to help you out if needed. Setup of a basic WordPress site should not cost a lot of money – no more than 2 to 4 hours; more advanced coding/theme styling requirements will cost more.

To better understand how WordPress sites work, you need to know that there are three distinctly separate components of WordPress that come together to display information on a web site. First of all is the underlying software code (code-base) that provides the foundation upon which a site is built and managed. The second component is a “theme” which provides the site’s unique formatting and layout (look and feel) using CSS (cascading style sheets). And finally, the content – the textual information and related images – which are stored in the site’s mySQL database.

In simplistic terms, when you open a WordPress “page” or “post”, the code calls the page’s (or post’s) correct “content” from the database and “pours” that content into the various “containers” (layout) on the page as defined in the site’s “theme”, which is then formatted by each container’s CSS attributes – all in a fraction of a second.

In WordPress, there is a key difference between a “page” and a “post”, the fundamentals are that a page is usually static content that rarely changes (key site info) and posts contain time stamped relevant info that can be sorted and displayed in many ways – chronologically, categorically, programmatically, etc.

For more information about WordPress, visit http://wordpress.org or the WordPress documentation site at http://codex.wordpress.org