Understanding WordPress by comparing it to a car

A useful way to conceptualise what WordPress is, is by comparing WordPress to a car. Every car will have 5 basic components that make it run, which include its:

• engine
• body
• interiors / dashboard
• extra features
• driver

The Engine

The “engine” of WordPress is called WordPress Core

WordPress is a free and open-source blogging tool and a content management system (yes, it’s free!). It’s free because WordPress is developed by a community of volunteer developers that have contributed to the code over the past decade. Yes, the system that powers over 60 million websites (23.3% of the top 10 million websites as of January 2015) is free and is a testament to the power of open-source software development. The thing that powers each of these websites is known as the WordPress Core, which is the core body of code that is downloaded from WordPress.org. Once installed on a web server (usually provided by a hosting company), it’s ready to go! If you’re not an engineer, stand-alone engines aren’t all that interesting, so the next step is put a body on it.

The Body

We wrap the engine with a body

There are a multitude of ready-made bodies out there that are typically variations on the same theme. In fact, template bodies that surround WordPress engines are called themes. The body is what most people see when they think about a car. Similarly, the theme is what most people see when they think about a website. Like a car body, the body can be painted in all sorts of different colours, and even configured in all sorts of different shapes, also known as customised front ends.

What is consistent, is the engine powering the body. The engine more or less runs the same way for every website.

Now, you need a place for the driver to control the website.

The Interior / Dashboard

It’s arguable that WordPress has become so popular due to the ease of use of the content management system – or what is sometimes known as the back-end. It’s easily one of the most user-friendly back-end systems that we’ve ever come across, and often requires little more than one hour of basic instruction to start driving it. From what is known as the dashboard, you can control nearly every aspect of your website’s functionality. This includes basic things like adding, changing and deleting pages, to more advanced things like activating extra features called plugins. What’s also very cool, is that you can set your Dashboard to have different levels of control – from authors who can only write pages and posts, to editors who can manage everyone’s pages and posts, to administrators who can control the entire website.

Extra Features

Plugins are to WordPress websites that after-market features are to cars. With a car, you might want to customise various aesthetic and functions, like its media player, audio system, upholstery, wheels, brakes, body upgrades, etc. Similarly, WordPress includes a plugin architecture that can be modified with over 30,000 special features – again, mostly free.

The Driver

The most important element within any car is its driver, which is analogous to the expertise of the person who is running the website. The raw website tools are powerful, and they can be utilised well or poorly. Just like owning a car does not mean it will perform as though Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton are driving it, the same is true of websites. When you give a highly skilled website team a tool like WordPress, they can create a website that generates targeted results. You can’t expect a novice to drive a race car well. They can drive it certainly, but their results will be less than a professionals. The driver is what makes the website more than lifeless software. It’s what makes it interesting to read, view, experience and purchase from.

WordPress is a powerful tool for business today

That, in a nutshell, is my imperfect analogy of how WordPress is like a car. I hope this has been useful for you in trying to understand how WordPress works, and why it’s so great. To finish off, I’ll include some WordPress statistics that should, without a doubt, illustrate the power of this amazing tool: