WordPress is an open-source and free Web publishing application, content management system (CMS) and blogging tool built by a community of developers and contributors. WordPress allows users to build dynamic websites and blogs that may be updated, customized and managed from its back-end CMS and integrated application and components.

In 2003, WordPress was created as a successor to b2/cafelog by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg. It is provided as a hosted or self-hosted Web blogging platform.

WordPress is built on PHP, supported by MySQL and integrates with a variety of features and tools used to design, develop and manage websites.

WordPress provides easily deployable proprietary and third-party themes, plug-ins and widgets that facilitate the integration of third-party code snippets, providing enhanced user features, including the ability to customize code, build search engine friendly internal-links and tagging.

There are two versions of the software. One version is hosted on a cloud and accessed via the Wordpress.com site. The other (wordpress.org) is available for download onto a private server or host. Technical and community support is provided by Wordpress and the Wordpress forums. A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites.

WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine–friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign 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 an article. WordPress blog posts can be edited in HTML, using the visual editor, or using one of a number of plugins that allow for a variety of customized editing features.