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 makes your WordPress site easier to manage, increases its longevity for future Internet technology adoption, and helps give your site the widest audience possible.

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.

WordPress started out as a fork of b2/cafelog by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. The first version was released in 2003.

WordPress is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The GPL is an open source license. This means you are free to modify and redistribute the source code under certain conditions. You can read more about why we chose the GPL on the License Page.

WordPress.com is a blog network run by Automattic. It uses WordPress software, but individual blogs are hosted and managed by WordPress.com. This is a free service with premium addons and upgrades.

Here at WordPress.org, you can download WordPress, the web software that WordPress.com runs on. Once you’ve downloaded it, you can upload it to a web server and run your own WordPress website.

There is useful information about this distinction on the WordPress.com website.

No. You should be able to use WordPress through the user interface, without ever having to touch PHP.

The only time you would modify your WordPress website with PHP would be when integrating some of the plugins. There are a small number of plugins that still require manual edits to your files. In most cases, clear instructions are usually given within a text file with the plugin.

Other than that, you would not be changing any of the PHP files.

For advanced information check out Know Your Sources.

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.

A security issue is a type of bug that can affect the security of WordPress installations.

Specifically, it is a report of a bug that you have found in the WordPress core code, and that you have determined can be used to gain some level of access to a site running WordPress that you should not have.

Your site being “hacked” is not a security issue. The security issue will involve knowing how the attacker got in and hacked the site. If you have details on the attack, then email us. If not, then the Support Forums are a better place to report such an issue.

You forgetting your password or losing access to your site is not a security issue. If you lost access through a bug in the WordPress code, then that might be a security issue.

Generally, security issues are complex problems. If you are wanting to report a security issue, then that’s great! You’re in the right place. However, be sure that what you’re reporting is actually a security issue. The experts that you are reporting it to are very busy, and don’t usually respond to non-security issues.

In other words, the security mailing addresses are NOT for support. Don’t send general problems to them.

If you are here to report any sort of security issue with a WordPress.com site, then please send an email with complete details to security [at] automattic.com. If the issue you’re trying to report is on WordPress.com and is not a security issue, then please use their support forums instead.

If you’re having an issue with your own self-hosted WordPress.org site that is not a security issue, then please use the WordPress.org support forums.

For security issues with WordPress plugins, email the information to plugins [at] wordpress.org, including as much detail as possible.

For security issues with the self-hosted version of WordPress, then you should send an email with the details to security [at] wordpress.org. Include as much detail as you can.

In all cases, you should not publish the details.

This is a server configuration problem. Never enable display_errors on a production site.

If you get an email saying “Someone has asked to reset the password for the following site and username”, this means someone visited the password reset page on your site. Anyone can visit this page, since it must be open to all for it to be accessible to those who have lost their password. Your password can be reset only by those who can read your email. If your email account has not been compromised, you can ignore this email.