WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS) that has risen from a handful of users to become the most-used blog tool in its category. It is written in the PHP scripting language and uses a MySQL database to store data from which pages are created dynamically. It has many features including:
- A plug-in architecture and a template system.
- The ability to re-arrange widgets without editing PHP or HTML code.
- Easy installation of and switching between themes.
- PHP and HTML code in themes can be edited for more advanced customizations.
- Integrated link management.
- A search engine-friendly, clean, permalink structure.
- The ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles.
- Support for tagging of posts and articles.
- Automatic filters that provide standardized formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes).
- Support of the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article.
WordPress was first released on May 27, 2003. As of August 2010, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 12.5 million times.
