Adapted from an article originally published on heronco.com (September 2018). Updated February 2026.
WordPress is one of the most popular website frameworks in the world. As of February 2026, it’s used by about 42.7% of all websites worldwide (and ~59.9% of sites that use a known CMS). But at first glance, it can seem a bit overwhelming. So, here’s a primer on the basics.
First, there are two ‘official’ WordPress websites: wordpress.com and wordpress.org. WordPress.org is the place where you can download WordPress software, for free, along with themes to control the look of your site, plugins to add additional features, user guides and support forums. With wordpress.org, you download the software and install it on your own website. And while the software itself is free, you will need to buy your domain name and web hosting from a third party, and be responsible for your own backups, updates and security.
WordPress.com is a hosted version of WordPress with different plans — the free plan is limited, but paid plans can include custom domains, going ad-free, and (on plugin-enabled plans) installing plugins and uploading themes.
The look and feel of every WordPress website is controlled by its theme. A theme is a collection of templates and stylesheets that define the layout and front-end styling for your pages, and also colors, fonts and graphics, although some themes allow you to customize these, as well. Your WordPress theme works with and on top of the WordPress code; it usually doesn’t – and by usually, I mean shouldn’t – change the core functions of WordPress. In a well-designed theme, the theme files are separate from your content: all the text and images you add to WordPress are stored in your WordPress database. Changing your theme changes the way your information looks, but your information itself doesn’t change.
2026 note: Newer block themes let you edit more than just page content — you can edit headers, footers, and templates using the block editor / Site Editor. (All sites from Her Website Launchpad and our parent company, Heron Design, use custom block themes.)
Out of the box, WordPress provides a pretty robust website. But most organizations will find that they need something a little more – whether it’s a contact form, a calendar, search engine optimization, or something as simple as duplicating content. These “something more’s” can be added with plugins. A plugin is code that adds a feature or function to your website, and, in my opinion, what makes WordPress such an incredible framework: hundreds of thousands of developers are constantly finding new features that they or their clients need, and writing plugins to do it. A saying we use almost daily in response to client requests is “there’s probably a plugin for that.” (And if there’s not, we’ll write one.) The cool thing about plugins is that when they add a feature to your website, if you change your theme, the plugin is still there – so you keep the plugin’s function even if you change the look of your website.
Most of the content in a WordPress site is held in either Pages, Posts or Media. A Page – the WordPress term for Page – is probably what you’re most familiar with in regular websites: it’s a static website page. Typically, pages are more-or-less permanent parts of your website, and typically the content included in your navigation menu: about us, contact, mission, services, get involved, donate, etc. Pages can have “parent pages” for logical grouping. For example, if you have an “About Us” page, you can nest other pages that have information about your organization, such as “Our Staff,” “Our Mission,” and “Our Board”; with “About Us” as the parent page, the link to Our Board, for example, would be https://www.yourdomain.org/about-us/board-of-directors. Descriptive URLs such as this are great for your SEO.
Posts, on the other hand, are the type of dynamic information that would appear in a feed: news articles, events, announcements, press releases, etc., and what most people associate with blogs. Posts can be organized by date, category, tag, and author; the default WordPress setting is to display them by date, newest first. They can include an excerpt, which is a shortened version that can be shown in a feed. Both Pages and Posts have the option to choose the author, publish date, and whether to allow comments, but typically these are only shown on Posts.
Both Pages and Posts include all standard WordPress editing tools. The WordPress editor is block-based — you add paragraphs, headings, images, buttons, etc. as individual blocks. Some themes include custom blocks for content that is repeated throughout the site, and you can save your own blocks (and groups of blocks) as reusable patterns, making it relatively easy to repeat elements that are used more than once.
Images and videos, along with PDFs, are stored in your Media Library. You can add files from the Media Library to any Page or Post.
Some websites, including many of our larger custom-designed sites, also have additional categories of custom content called Custom Post Types – these are for storing information that have pretty consistently defined fields, and that you’ll need to display in a feed-like group. For example, in recent websites we’ve developed, we’ve created custom post types for coaches (of a swim team) and doctors (of a practice) so that we could display basic information for all on one master page, with links to each individual’s bio. Custom post types are generally added to a site by using a plugin.
Creating a Page or a Post is simple: add a title, add some content, add an image if you like. The WordPress editing screen is a lot like Microsoft Word, with buttons for bold, italic, bullets, etc. When you are finished adding content, hit the blue Publish button. In WordPress, Publish is the key to making your content public for the world to see. You can, of course, save your page or post as a draft and return later to finish it, if you prefer. But if you leave a Page or Post without hitting Publish or Save Draft, you’ll lose your work.
WordPress isn’t rocket science. Once you understand the basic terminology, get your site set up and start using in it, the sky really is the limit. My best advice for learning it? Get into a WordPress site and play with it.
If you’d like someone to do the heavy lifting for you, Her Website Launchpad offers a couple of lower-cost options: We can set up a 5-page starter website for you that matches your branding, with placeholder content and tutorials on how to replace it with your own, for under $1,000. Learn more here.
Coming soon: We can build a site for you — based on one of our templates — that matches your branding with your content added for you, for $1,998. In less than two weeks, you can have your WordPress website ready to use in your marketing. Email me to learn more about our done-for-you program, and I’ll let you know when we launch that!
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