What is Wordpres?

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL which runs on a Web hosting service.^[5] Features include a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1 million" websites,^[when?] and as of August 2011 manages 22% of all new websites.^[6] WordPress is currently the most popular blogging system in use on the Web,^[7][8] powering over 60 million websites worldwide

Features[edit]

WordPress template hierarchy

WordPress has a web template system using a template processor.

Themes[edit]

WordPress users may install and switch between themes. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website or installation without altering the information content or structure of the site. Themes may be installed using the WordPress "Appearance" administration tool or theme folders may be uploaded via FTP.^[12] The PHP, HTML & CSS code found in themes can be added or edited for providing advanced features. Thousands of WordPress themes exist, some free, and some premium (paid for) templates.

Plugins[edit]

One very popular feature of WordPress is its rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its abilities beyond the core installation. WordPress has a database of over 24,000 plugins,^[13] each of which offer custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their site to their specific needs. These customizations range fromSEO (Search Engine Optimization) enhancers to content-displaying features, such as the addition of widgets and navigation bars.

Widgets[edit]

Widgets are small modules that offer users drag-and-drop sidebar content placement through the implementation of plugins' extended abilities. Some of these Widgets offer customization options such as web forms to fill out, includes or excludes of data and information such as Categories, Archives and Recent Posts, optional images through slideshows and/or carousels, amongst other customization features.These small modules are typically displayed within the header (header.php), footer (footer.php) and sidebars (sidebar.php files) of websites, but can also be placed outside of said locations enabling even further customization.

Multi-user and multi-blogging[edit]

Prior to WordPress 3.0, WordPress supported one blog per installation, although multiple concurrent copies may be run from different directories if configured to use separate database tables. WordPress Multi-User (WordPress MU, or WPMU) was a fork of WordPress created to allow multiple blogs to exist within one installation but is able to be administered by a centralized maintainer. WordPress MU makes it possible for those with a website to host their own blogging community, as well as control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. WordPress MU adds eight new data tables for each blog.

As of the release of WordPress 3.0, WordPress MU has merged with WordPress.^[14]

Mobiles[edit]

Native applications exist for WebOS,^[15] Android,^[16] iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad),^[17][18] Windows Phone, and BlackBerry.^[19] These applications, designed by Automattic allow a limited set of options, which include adding new blog posts and pages, commenting, moderating comments, replying to comments in addition to the ability to view the stats.^[17][18]

Other features of note[edit]

WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine–friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters are also included, providing standardized formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes). WordPress also supports the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article.

History[edit]

b2/cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog, was the precursor to WordPress.^[20] b2/cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2,000 blogs as of May 2003.^[21] It was written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Although WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development.

WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.^[22] Christine Selleck Tremoulet, a friend of Mullenweg, suggested the name WordPress.^[23]

In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package were changed by Six Apart and many of its most influential users migrated to WordPress.^[24][25] By October 2009 the 2009 Open Source content management system Market Share Report reached the conclusion that WordPress enjoyed the greatest brand strength of any open-source content-management systems.^[26]

Awards[edit]

In 2007, WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award.^[27]

In 2009, WordPress won the Packt best Open Source CMS Awards.^[28]

In 2010, WordPress won the Hall of Fame CMS category in the 2010 Open Source Awards.^[29]

In 2011, WordPress won the Open Source Web App of the Year Award at The Critters.^[30][31]

Removal of sponsored themes[edit]

On July 10, 2007, following a discussion on the WordPress ideas forum^[32] and a post by Mark Ghosh in his blog Weblog Tools Collection,^[33] Matt Mullenweg announced that the official WordPress theme directory at http://themes.wordpress.net would no longer host themes containing sponsored links.^[34][35] Although this move was criticized by designers and users of sponsored themes,^[36] it was applauded by WordPress users who consider such themes to be spam.^[37] The official WordPress theme directory ceased to accept any new themes, including those without sponsored links, shortly after the announcement was made. Sponsored themes are still available elsewhere, as well as free themes with additional sponsored links added by third parties.^[38][39]

On July 18, 2008, a new theme directory opened on WordPress.org,^[40] styled along the same lines as the plug-ins directory.^[41] Any theme that is uploaded to it will be vetted, first by an automated program and then by a human.

On December 12, 2008, over 200 themes were removed from the WordPress theme directory as they did not comply with GPL License requirements.^[42] Today, author mentions are permitted in each theme but the official policy does not allow for sponsorships or links to sites distributing non-GPL compatible themes. Non-GPL compliant themes are now hosted on other theme directories.

Releases[edit]

Main releases of WordPress are codenamed after well-known jazz musicians, starting after version 1.0.

WordPress

Screenshot [show]
Developer(s)	WordPress Foundation
Initial release	May 27, 2003[1]
Stable release	3.5.2 / June 21, 2013; 23 days ago[2]
Preview release	3.6 Beta 3 / May 11, 2013; 2 months ago[3]
Development status	Active
Operating system	Cross-platform
Platform	PHP
Type	Blog software
License	GNU GPLv2 (or later)[4]
Website	wordpress.org

What is Blogger?

Blogger is Google’s free tool for creating blogs. It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com.

Blogs, short for web-logs, are a form of online journal.

ou can use blogs for everything from updating your friends and family about your life, giving your own advice column, discussing your political views, or relating your experience in a topic of interest. You can host blogs with multiple contributors, or you can run your own solo show. You can even use Blogger to make your own podcast feeds.

Although there are fancier blog tools out there, the mixture of cost (free) and flexibility makes Blogger one of the best deals around.

Setting Up Your Blog

Setting up a Blogger account takes three easy steps. Create an account, name your blog, and choose a template. You can host multiple blogs with the same account name, so you only need to do that part once. This way you could separate your professional blog about your business from your personal blog about dogs, for instance.

Hosting Your Blog

PostingBlogger will host your blog for free on blogspot.com. You can also use Blogger to automatically ftp your blog posts to your own web space. Make sure you have the correct server settings from your internet service provider, otherwise you may have unpredictable results.

Once your blog is set up, Blogger has a basic WYSIWYG editor. (What you see is what you get) This is not necessarily a bad thing. Most blogging tools do not have robust html editors, and the ones that do often require java or other plug-ins.

If you need more formatting options and a larger window, you can use Google Docs to post to your Blogger blog. You could also do advanced editing with HTML. Blogger has an HTML tab to let you do this directly, although it does not allow JavaScript.

Email Your Posts

You can optionally configure Blogger with a secret email address, so you can email your posts to your blog. This is handy for making updates on the fly or updating from your cell phone or other mobile device.

Pictures

Blogger will let you upload pictures from your desktop and post them to your blog. You can choose the basic layout and size of your images, and they’ll be uploaded to Bloggers’s server space, so you don’t have to host the pictures on a different website.

That doesn't mean you can't post with pictures that you've hosted elsewhere on the Web. You can also use Picasa Web Albums to post pictures to your blog.

Google Video and YouTube videos can similarly be directly linked into your blog posts.

What is Youtube?

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006, on which users can upload, view and share videos.^[4] The company is based in San Bruno, California, and usesAdobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos

Screenshot of YouTube's homepage
Type	Subsidiary of Google, limited liability company
Foundation date	February 14, 2005
Headquarters	901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, California, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim
Key people	Salar Kamangar (CEO) Chad Hurley (Advisor)
Industry	Internet
Parent	Independent (2005–2006) Google (2006–present)
Slogan(s)	Broadcast Yourself (2005–2012)
Website	YouTube.com (see list of localized domain names)
Written in	Python[1]
Alexa rank	3 (April 2013)[2]
Type of site	Video hosting service
Advertising	Google AdSense
Registration	Optional (Only required for certain tasks such as viewing flagged videos, viewing flagged comments, liking videos, adding videos to playlists and uploading videos)
Available in	54 language versions available through user interface[3]
Launched	February 14, 2005
Current status	Active

What is Adsense?

AdSense

Google AdSense is a program run by Google Inc. that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media adverts that are targeted to site content and audience. These adverts are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested acost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering (also owned by Google.

Google uses its Internet search technology to serve advertisements based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted advertisement system may enroll through Google AdWords. AdSense has become a popular company in creating and placing banner advertisements on a website, because the advertisements are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the advertisements is often relevant to the website.

Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content; it is the most popular advertising network.^[4] AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small websites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and sales people to generate revenue with. To fill a website with advertisements that are relevant to the topics discussed, webmasters place a brief HTML code on the websites' pages. Websites that are content-rich have been very successful with this advertising program, as noted in a number of publisher case studies on the AdSense website. AdSense publishers may only place three ad units per page.

Some webmasters put significant effort into maximizing their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:^{[citation needed]}

1. They use a wide range of traffic-generating techniques, including but not limited to online advertising.
2. They build valuable content on their websites that attracts AdSense advertisements, which pay out the most when they are clicked.
3. They use text content on their websites that encourages visitors to click on advertisements. Note that Google prohibits webmasters from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. The phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program, which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction. AdSense commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (i.e., a bid not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid. Google currently shares 68% of revenue generated by AdSense with content network partners, and 51% of revenue generated by AdSense with AdSense for Search partners

History[edit]

Oingo, Inc., a privately held company located in Los Angeles, was started in 1998 by Gilad Elbaz and Adam Weissman. Oingo developed a proprietary search algorithm that was based on word meanings and built upon an underlying lexicon called WordNet, which was developed over the previous 15 years by researchers at Princeton University, led byGeorge Miller.^[6]

Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics in 2001,^[7] which was later acquired by Google in April 2003.^[8]

Google launched its AdSense program in March 2003 and made it public in June of that year. Some advertisers complained that AdSense yielded worse results than AdWords, since it served ads that related contextually to the content on a web page and that content was less likely to be related to a user's commercial desires than search results. For example, someone browsing a blog dedicated to flowers was less likely to be interested in ordering flowers than someone searching for terms related to flowers. As a result, in 2004 Google allowed its advertisers to opt out of the AdSense network.^[9]

By early 2005 AdSense accounted for an estimated 15 percent of Google's total revenues.^[9]

In 2009, Google AdSense announced that it would now be offering new features, including the ability to "enable multiple networks to display ads".

In February 2010, Google AdSense started using search history in contextual matching to offer more relevant ads.^[10]

Types[edit]

AdSense for Content[edit]

The content-based adverts can be targeted for interest or context. The targeting can be CPC (click) or CPM (impression) based. There's no significant difference^[11] between CPC and CPM earnings, however CPC ads are more common. There are various ad sizes for available for content ads. The ads can be simple text, image, animated image, flash, video, or rich media ads. At most ad sizes, users can change whether to show both text and multimedia ads or just one of them. As of November 2012, a grey arrow appears beneath AdSense text ads for easier identification.

AdSense for Feeds[edit]

In May 2005, Google announced a limited-participation beta version of AdSense for Feeds, a version of AdSense that runs on RSS and Atom feeds that have more than 100 active subscribers. According to the Official Google Blog, "advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising—and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from."^[12]

AdSense for Feeds works by inserting images into a feed. When the image is displayed by a RSS reader or Web browser, Google writes the advertising content into the image that it returns. The advertisement content is chosen based on the content of the feed surrounding the image. When the user clicks the image, he or she is redirected to the advertiser's website in the same way as regular AdSense advertisements.

AdSense for Feeds remained in its beta state until August 15, 2008, when it became available to all AdSense users.

AdSense for search[edit]

A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google Custom Search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares 51% of the advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner.^[5] However the publisher is paid only if the advertisements on the page are clicked; AdSense does not pay publishers for regular searches. Web publishers have reported that they also pay a range from $0.64 to $0.88 per click.

AdSense for mobile content[edit]

AdSense for mobile content allows publishers to generate earnings from their mobile websites using targeted Google advertisements. Just like AdSense for content, Google matches advertisements to the content of a website — in this case, a mobile website. Instead of traditional JavaScript code, technologies such as PHP, ASP and others are used.

AdSense for domains[edit]

AdSense for domains allows advertisements to be placed on domain names that have not been developed. This offers domain name owners a way to monetize domain names that are otherwise dormant or not in use. AdSense for domains is currently being offered to all AdSense publishers, but it wasn't always available to all.

On December 12, 2008, TechCrunch reported that AdSense for Domains is available for all US publishers.^[13]

On February 22, 2012, Google announced that it was shutting down its Hosted AdSense for Domains program.^[14]

AdSense for video[edit]

AdSense for video allows publishers with video content to generate revenue using ad placements from Google's extensive advertising network including popular YouTubevideos.^[15]

How AdSense works[edit]

• The webmaster inserts the AdSense JavaScript code into a webpage.
• Each time this page is visited, the JavaScript code uses inlined JSON to display content fetched from Google's servers.
• For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, advertisements are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. (More details are described in the AdSense patent.)
• For site-targeted advertisements, the advertiser chooses the page(s) on which to display advertisements, and pays based on cost per mille (CPM), or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand advertisements displayed.^[16][17]
• For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service.^[18] The referral program was retired in August 2008.^[19]
• Search advertisements are added to the list of results after the visitor performs a search.
• Because the JavaScript is sent to the Web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other website owners to copy the JavaScript code into their own webpages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which advertisements should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.

Abuse[edit]

Some webmasters create websites tailored to lure searchers from Google and other engines onto their AdSense website to make money from clicks. Such websites often contain nothing but a large amount of interconnected, automated content (e.g., a directory with content from the Open Directory Project, or scraper websites relying on RSS feeds for content). Possibly the most popular form of such "AdSense farms" are splogs (spam blogs), which are centered around known high-paying keywords. Many of these websites use content from other websites, such as Wikipedia, to attract visitors. These and related approaches are considered to be search engine spam and can be reported to Google.^[20]

A Made for AdSense (MFA) website or webpage has little or no content, but is filled with advertisements so that users have no choice but to click on advertisements. Such pages were tolerated in the past, but due to complaints, Google now disables such accounts.

There have also been reports of Trojan horses engineered to produce counterfeit Google advertisements that are formatted looking like legitimate ones. The Trojan uploads itself onto an unsuspecting user's computer through a webpage and then replaces the original advertisements with its own set of malicious advertisements.^[21]

Criticism[edit]

Due to alleged concerns about click fraud, Google AdSense has been criticized by some search engine optimization firms as a large source of what Google calls "invalid clicks", in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine advertisements to drive up the other company's costs.^[23]There have been numerous complaints reported about the difference in treatment that a publisher is receiving from Asia against one from the US.^{[22][not in citation given]}

To help prevent click fraud, AdSense publishers can choose from a number of click-tracking programs.^{[citation needed]} These programs display detailed information about the visitors who click on the AdSense advertisements. Publishers can use this to determine whether or not they have been a victim of click fraud. There are a number of commercial tracking scripts available for purchase.^{[citation needed]}

Millions of webmasters and website owners depend on revenue generated from google adsense but the company can be dishonest and manipulative in reporting in that it provides estimates of revenue earned with a small disclaimer that the finalized earnings may be slightly lower than estimated. However, the amount deducted can be 50% or even 100% (deducted as "invalid clicks"), a gross manipulation of adsense publishers.

The payment terms for webmasters have also been criticized.^[24] Google withholds payment until an account reaches US$100,^[25] but many micro content providers^{[citation needed]}require a long time—years in some cases—to build up this much AdSense revenue. However, Google will pay all earned revenue greater than US$10 when an AdSense account is closed and not disabled. On the other side Google bills its customers (API users for example) monthly, in increments as low as a few cents.^{[citation needed]}

Many website owners complain that their AdSense accounts have been disabled just before they were supposed to receive their first paycheck from Google.^{[citation needed]} Google claims accounts have been disabled due to click fraud or forbidden content, but have offered no proof of this.^{[citation needed]} An automated email is sent to the publisher's owner which offers no reasoning, or options but a link to file an appeal.^{[citation needed]} In the email, Google states that "Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers."^{[citation needed]} The revenue generated - whether legitimate or not - is taken, and all complaints are deferred.^{[26][not in citation given]}

Google came under fire when the official Google AdSense Blog showcased the French video website Imineo.com. This website violated Google's AdSense Program Policies by displaying AdSense alongside sexually explicit material. Typically, websites displaying AdSense have been banned from showing such content.^[27]

It has been reported that using both AdSense and AdWords may cause a website to pay Google a commission when the website advertises itself.^[28]

In some cases, AdSense displays inappropriate or offensive ads. For example, in a news story about a terrorist attack in India, an advert was generated for a (presumably non-existent) educational qualification in terrorism.^[29]

AdSense uses tracking cookies that are viewed by some users as a threat to privacy.^[30] Webmasters that use AdSense must place the appropriate warning in the privacy policy page.^[31]