Wordpress is an open source online publishing system.

What this means in practice is that it is a free software that you can install on your hosting account to publish your own website.

It was originally developed to allow people to write their own blogs but has grown to become a highly sophisticated system that can be used for publishing full brochure websites and even e-commerce websites.

There are really four main aspects to a Wordpress website:

1. Theme

A Wordpress theme defines its style and layout.  This is effectively what you would call the website design.  A number of standard themes are available but a professional web designer can develop you a custom theme to make your Wordpress site look and function exactly the way you want.

2. Content

A great looking website is nothing without great content.  Wordpress allows the sites owner to write and edit content for the sites pages and blog posts from its online control panel.  The control panel is very simple and allows users without any specialist technical know, how to keep their website up to date.  A nice feature of Wordpress is that you can also allocate multiple authors to your site, and assign different levels of control over the website to different users.

3. Plugins

Wordpress is an excellent platform on which to build a website and has some great standard features, but there is almost unlimited potential to increase its functionality using plugins.   Plugins are basically upgrades or extensions to the Wordpress system that can be used to make the site function exactly the way you need it to.  For example, they can be used to improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) or integrate your website with other web technologies such as flickr and Youtube. Thousands of plugins are available, and your web developer can create one specifically to meet your requirements.

4. Widgets

Wordpress widgets are in effect gadgets that can be inserted into pre-defined spaces in your website themes layout.  For example, clocks and calendars, online polls, news feeds, newsletter sign up forms etc.  As with plugins a large number of existing widgets are available or you can have your own widget custom designed by a web programmer.

At Semi-skimmed we build websites for charities and small businesses using Wordpress.  Using a combination of customised themes, plugins and widgets, we tailor each site to meet the specific needs of each client.  We can also provide help with copy writing to ensure that your website content is doing your organisation justice.