WordPress Explained through Metaphors
Are you struggling to understand what WordPress is?
Sometimes direct definitions are worthless when you are starting at the beginning.
Here’s an example from my real life.
I put a learning app on my 8-year-old son’s tablet. Words rained down, and he had to choose which was a noun, pronoun, adverb, verb, adjective or preposition before the 1st word hit the bottom of the screen. He asked, “what is a preposition?” I could not find the words to define preposition to my son. “I know them all,” I said lamely, and named many. So of course we came onto the web.
The web’s definition of preposition didn’t clear up a thing for my son. If I define WordPress like you’ve already seen it before it will not help you (especially if you are still searching). I’m going to define WordPress in a new way.
For absolute beginners, often a definition defines nothing. It causes frustration. Think about an 8-year-old reading this! It is not a good explanation for a beginner.
Learning What WordPress is Through Metaphors
For those of us old enough this is going to be things you remember. If you are younger then forget the exact names and think in terms of timelines.
DOS is to Windows
as
Website Code is to WordPress
The Metaphor
Remember DOS? It was the only thing around before we had Windows and Macintosh (graphical user interfaces that allowed us to point and click).
Windows and Macintosh had another layer: software programs. Back then WordPerfect ruled and MS Word was #2. These programs began having predictable patterns: we could expect to find specific things under File for whatever word-processing software we used, for example.
It’s Relation to WordPress
The very first websites were in HTML, think of this as DOS. It was hard to use and you needed to know the exact things to type in to make anything happen at all. Often things could be destroyed “forever” by a mistake. FINALLY we got some graphical user interfaces (Windows!).
WordPress is the web’s equivalent of Windows and it’s rivals Joomla and Drupal (I don’t like them) are options, too. We don’t need to know any programming language. We can point, click, type and see our websites change. No longer are we dependent on a programmer.
WordPress “out of the box” isn’t enough, though. It’s like installing Windows and not having Office. The free themes that come with WordPress are the equivalent of Note, a free and very limited program.
Windows is to MS Word
as
WordPress is to Themes
WordPress isn’t just for new websites. There are huge companies that use it. In August of 2013 more then 18% of the top 10 million websites used WordPress.
I created free documents to help you.
