WordPress has been around since 2003 and is the most popular blogging software on the market, powering over a 40% of websites. Establishing itself as the content management system (CMS) of choice. WordPress hosting is making WordPress sites accessible on the web.
- Check our curated list of the best WordPress web hosting services and our best managed web hosting list which includes a number of managed WordPress web hosting firms.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that’s, statistically (a whopping 43.4% of all websites you see on the internet are powered by WordPress), the most popular way to create websites and blogs. Since the WordPress software is open source, anyone can use it completely free of cost (the cost comes when you want to make the site accessible on the Internet - that’s hosting).
The birth and rise of WordPress is a fascinating tale, and it all began in 2001 when a French programmer named Michel Valdrighi created the b2 or cafelog blogging system. The original hero of the story, though, saw an early exit, as he couldn’t keep updating the blogging system - he stopped developing it in 2002. Then, in January 2003, a university freshman Matt Mullenweg took it upon himself to continue improving b2 without Valdrighi.
Together with Mike Little, he launched a new version of b2 on SourceForge on May 27, 2003 - they called it WordPress 0.7. It’s worth noting that the name “WordPress” was a suggestion by Christine Selleck, Matt’s friend and a blogger. Next came WordPress 1.0, or “Davis”, on January 3, 2004, WordPress 1.2, or “Mingus”, on May 22, 2004, and WordPress 1.5, or “Strayhorn”, on February 17, 2005 . Fancy names, right? Well, Matt Mullenweg liked jazz, so he decided to name the different versions of WordPress after jazz greats. Davis, for example, comes from Miles Davis, who was a famous American trumpeter.
WordPress 1.0, in many ways, was the first iteration of the WordPress we know today - it had multiple categories, allowing users to group their website’s content, simple installations, permalinks so that the pages could be found by search engines, and comment moderation. 2004 was indeed a good year for WordPress, as its then toughest competitor, Movable Type, decided to change its pricing structure - and it was for the worse. This drove away a lot of users, who then opted for WordPress, which was undoubtedly the best alternative.
The next major event was in August 2005, when Matt Mullenweg launched his own company, Automattic Inc., after raising $1.10 million in Series A funding. Automattic Inc. is the company behind WordPress.com, the for-profit platform for self-publishing that allows you to set up a website with ease; it offers managed hosting, wherein it looks after important tasks related to website creation and maintenance, such as website security, performance, and speed, for you.
WordPress.org, on the other hand, is for “self-hosting” WordPress, and it’s non-profit. This is where the development of the open source WordPress CMS takes place. You can download the WordPress source code from WordPress.org and then upload it with your chosen hosting provider. This is undoubtedly more complex and requires a fair bit of technical expertise, but I’ll explain how you can easily make a WordPress site with a third-party hosting service in just a moment.
At the time of writing, WordPress 6.6 is the latest version, having been launched on July 16, 2024. Today, WordPress is a constantly growing community comprising thousands of developers, bloggers, and designers who all contribute to improving the platform (including releasing plugins, applications, and themes) for the around 500 million websites that use WordPress.
What popular sites are built on WordPress?
As I mentioned earlier, WordPress is home to nearly half a billion websites on the internet - that’s around half of all the websites that exist! Naturally, there are a lot of big-name brands that use WordPress to maintain their online presence.
Government and news websites
- The White House
- NASA
- The Harvard Gazette
- Time Magazine
- WIRED
- TED Blog
- CNN Press Room
- Microsoft News
- Meta Newsroom
Entertainment brands
- The Walt Disney Company
- Vogue
- Rolling Stone
- PlayStation.Blog
- Sony Music
- Angry Birds
- Spotify Newsroom
- BBC America
- Star Wars Blog
Celebrities
How can I host a WordPress website?
It’s important to note that WordPress is technically free software that you can directly download from WordPress.org and install on a server (web hosting). What is web hosting, you ask? It’s a service that provides you with online storage and computing resources that you can use to make website files that make up your website accessible on the Internet. The server, in this case, is called the “host”.
There are a couple of approaches you can take to creating a WordPress website:
First, sign up to a best web hosting service and then install WordPress first-hand from one of the one-click WordPress installers or upload WordPress and supporting files if necessary to a VPS. This would involve uploading the WordPress files to your server, creating a database for WordPress, and setting up your site once WordPress is installed. Using a VPS can be more cost effective but if you don’t know what you’re doing it might not be the fastest or most secure option (if you do, it can be the fastest and most secure).
However, if this is your first time creating a site on WordPress, or if you’d like to get set up quickly, I’d recommend opting for one of the best WordPress hosting providers instead. These come with WordPress-optimized server environments, pre-installed WordPress and WP plugins, themes, etc., making it a breeze to go live like a professional. And, of course, a good hosting plan (WordPress-optimized or otherwise) would come included with a free domain name, which is your website’s address on the internet.
Either way, once you’re in the WordPress dashboard, all that’s really left to be done to complete the process is tweaking the website’s settings. This involves deciding the website’s title, subtitle, time zone, theme, etc. To add your very first page, click on “Pages” (or “Posts,” if you want to add a post) in the left-hand menu and select “Add New.” In addition to text, you can also add images and videos to your content. Click “Publish” to take the page/post live.
Simple enough, no? Well, WordPress’s ease of use is what has made it the most widely used CMS in the world. With that said, the most important part of creating a WordPress website is deciding what kind of hosting service you’d like. Let me break this down further:
Managed WordPress hosting: this is the one I recommend, especially if you’re new to the space. As the name suggests, “managed” WordPress hosting handles all the core (and technical) hosting administrative tasks for you. This includes installing and updating WordPress, carrying out daily and on-demand backups, and keeping your site safe from nefarious cybercriminals through regular monitoring and maintenance.
Additionally, you’ll get access to dedicated customer support, including one-on-one expert guidance on how to get started with the service. Even better, managed hosts have WordPress experts in their support team, meaning they’ll have a higher level of knowledge regarding WordPress and will, therefore, be able to iron out any technical issues that happen on your website.
Check out the best managed WordPress hosting providers
Unmanaged WordPress hosting: opposite to managed hosting, unmanaged hosting places the onus of updating, security, advanced functionality, and the overall administration of your WordPress site on your shoulders - you won’t get much assistance from the host. Needless to say, this type of WordPress hosting is ideal for technical users, who’d very much like total control over their hosting.
Naturally, a massive benefit of unmanaged WordPress hosting is that it’s cheaper than managed hosting, which could almost make putting the extra effort into managing your site hands-on worthwhile. However, I won’t advise ditching managed WP hosting simply for pricing reasons; that’s because providers such as IONOS and Namecheap offer super cheap managed WordPress hosting plans with top-of-the-line security features, excellent reliability, and plenty of resources.
VPS for WordPress: if you’re after more freedom, control, resources, and value for your money, use a VPS for WordPress. VPS, or virtual private servers, are isolated virtual environments within a physical server, meaning resources aren’t shared with other users (as they are in shared hosting), plus you get your own server space (with full root access) at a fraction of the cost of an entire dedicated server.
Furthermore, even the best managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting plans often use the shared hosting scheme, which won’t cut it if you have a blog that experiences a good amount of traffic or it gets periodical spikes in traffic. Secondly, if you’re running a website for business purposes – entrepreneurial bloggers, small businesses, or eCommerce sites – then it’s important to have a hosting arrangement that won’t let your site crash or load slowly. Lastly, VPS is also a top choice if you want to host multiple WordPress sites.
As is the case with unmanaged hosting, VPS hosting, too, is primarily meant for experts, as tasks such as monitoring and updating the WordPress software, setting up the firewall, or installing security patches will be up to you to figure out and execute. However, this shouldn’t have to be a deal breaker for you at all, as you can get the best of both worlds by choosing a managed VPS plan for WordPress.
Yes, these are slightly more expensive than your typical VPS or unmanaged shared WordPress hosting, but for those who need the benefits of VPS (better security, reliability, resources, etc.) plus the ability to focus on what they do best while letting experts handle their WordPress site’s performance, security, and optimization, it’s well worth the expenditure. My top two recommendations for this are DreamHost and GreenGeeks.
What is a CMS?
A CMS is the user interface used to upload, edit and manage all content on a website without having to learn code. This lead to the gradual decline of web design software like Dreamweaver. In other words, if you wanted to add a new page to your website, this is where you would log in and follow a few simple steps to do that.
