WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress as Themes. WordPress was created as a blog-publishing system but has evolved to support other web content types including more traditional mailing lists and forums, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems (LMS), and online stores. One of the most popular content management system solutions in use, WordPress is used by 43.5% of the top 10 million websites as of October 2024. There are over 835 million installs of WordPress on the internet.

Most of the websites designed and hosted with Simply Web Services are made using WordPress as the CMS. We love how it works, we are extremely familiar with it and we are aware of its strengths and weaknesses.

One thing to remember is that your WordPress website needs to be updated regularly in order for it to function properly and to take care of security vulnerabilities. If your website was designed by SWS and hosted on our servers, we will update your WordPress installation for you. However, if you are having to do it yourself, here is a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

On the rare chance that your update doesn’t go smoothly, the number one reason for failure is incorrect credentials and the next reason is not enough disk space for the upgrade.