FAQ’s

About WordPress

What is WordPress?
WordPress is open source web software that you can install on your web server to create your website, blog, community, or network. WordPress started out as a tool for blogging, but has evolved into a full-fledged Content Management System (CMS), capable of powering websites, networks, and communities. For more information:
Why Choose WordPress?
One of the principal advantages of WordPress is that you are in control. Unlike remote-hosted scripts such as Blogger and LiveJournal, you host WordPress on your own server. Installation is very simple, as is the configuration. Unlike other software programs, there are not a million files to chmod nor are there dozens of templates to edit just to get your site set up and looking the way you want. Also, Blog pages in WordPress are generated on the fly whenever a page is requested, so you do not have multiple archive pages clogging up your web space. Waiting for pages to rebuild is a thing of the past because template changes are made in scant seconds. WordPress is built following W3C standards for XHTML and CSS, ensuring that your site is more easily rendered across standards-compliant browsers. Other browsers are supported with a few hacks; it’s a reality of the web that hacks are necessary. Aggregator support is built-in with a number of standard RSS configurations already done for you, as well as Atom. Following standards make your WordPress site easier to manage, increases its longevity for future Internet technology adoption, and helps give your site the widest audience possible.
What are WordPress’ features?
WordPress has an extensive list of features and, as it is constantly evolving, this list of features is constantly growing. Check out the up-to-date list of features.
When was WordPress first released?
WordPress started out as a fork of b2/cafelog by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. The first version was released in 2003.
Can I transfer my blog or website from other services to a self-hosted WordPress installation?
You can transfer any blog or website from any service you wish. We have a list of guides which will help you to transfer from your specific platform.
I don’t know what all the WordPress terms mean: where can I get help?
The WordPress Codex has a Glossary where you can find definitions of many of the key phrases associated with WordPress.

FAQ's Advance Topic

How do you get cruft free URIs for search results?
To return clean URIs for search results in WordPress from the search form (www.example.com/search/searchterms instead of www.example.com/?s=searchterms) First create a file called search.php which contains:
<?php header('Location: http://www.example.com/search/' . $_GET['s']); ?>
Put that file in the root of your WordPress install and alter the action for the search form to this:
action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/search.php"
See also:
Can WordPress power group/collective blogs?
Many users can register and participate on a WordPress blog. You can even assign them different privileges ("User Levels"), so there can be "administrators" and simple "contributors". For more information see User Levels.
How do I get .phps files to show up in colored text on my server?
If you want to have your server display .phps files in color like this updatelinkroll.phps at carthik.net, add the following line to your .htaccess file in the server root directory. This assumes your server is Apache and that you have the ability to add types in .htaccess
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
How can I do a bulk edit of the Status field for all the posts in my database?
Use the following SQL commands to change the post_status for every post in your wp_posts database table. This command will do the bulk change and exclude Pages from being changed--remember to replace STATUS with draft, private, or publish.
UPDATE wp_posts  SET post_status = 'STATUS' WHERE post_status != 'static';
If you have multiple authors and only want to do a bulk edit of just one author's post, you can use the following command, but remember to replace NUMBER with the correct ID number of the post_author.
 UPDATE wp_posts SET post_status='STATUS' WHERE post_author='NUMBER';
See also: