If you are wondering what is WordPress, then you’re at the right place.  WordPress is a content management system and a blog publishing application.  It is built based on latest web standards, aesthetics and usability.  The latest version 2.8 was released in June 2009.
 
According to the official site, “WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.”  That summarizes this elegant and useful blogging tool.  This tool is created and maintained by the community for the community and focuses on user friendliness and adherence to web standards.  Its uses extend beyond just blogging and can be used as a website, ezine, corporate site and so on!  It is versatile.

Cost Involved

What is WordPress in terms of cost?  Free.  It is open source released under GPL (General Public License).  That means the tool can be used for any purpose without any fee.  Further, it can be modified and marketed by anyone without any restrictions.

History behind the Product

WordPress is the successor of another weblog/news tool called b2 which began in 2001.  In 2003, this blog tool was born in its current name and has passed through various changes and new features have been added along the way.  What is WordPress today?  It is currently considered the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world.  The versions 2.9 and 3.0 are scheduled to be released in 2009.

Requirements and Variations

It runs with PHP for server side scripting and MySQL database.  The recent versions require PHP version 4.3 or later and MySQL 4.0 or greater.  Apache or Litespeed server is recommended, though any server supporting PHP and MySQL will be compatible.  WordPress supports only one weblog for one installation.  However, if you use separate database tables, then multiple concurrent copies can be activated from different directories.  WordPress Multi-user lets website owners host and moderate blogging communities from one dashboard.  It allows eight new data tables per blog. 

Features

What is WordPress when it comes to features?  A list of a few features of this blog tool (list not exhaustive):

• Compliance with web standards of W3C – ensures interoperability with different internet browsers.

• Wordpress Themes – Fully operable themes that suit any need from a simple blog to a complicated ezine is made simple with just a click!

• Comments and spam protection

• WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) method of text formatting

• Intelligent Work flow, user management and multi-authoring

• Static pages, dynamic blog posts and customizable home page

• Plugins and widgets – these are scripts/codes that integrate with the blog tool and cater to specific purpose – say integration of a payment module using Paypal.  These make the tool customizable according to the needs of the user.