WordPress.com is a platform for self-publishing that is popular for

blogging A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

and other works. It is owned and operated by Automattic, Inc. It is run on a modified version of WordPress software. This website provides free blog hosting for registered users and is financially supported via paid upgrades, "VIP" services and advertising. While Automattic is among the many companies contributing to the WordPress project, neither it nor WordPress.com are affiliated with the

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architectu ...

software/project or the WordPress Foundation.

History

The website opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005 and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It was initially launched as an invitation-only service, although at one stage, accounts were also available to users of the Flock web browser. As of February 2017, over 77 million new posts and 42.7 million new comments are published monthly on the service. Registration is not required to read or

comment Comment may refer to: * Comment (linguistics) or rheme, that which is said about the topic (theme) of a sentence * Bernard Comment (born 1960), Swiss writer and publisher Computing * Comment (computer programming), explanatory text or informat ...

on blogs hosted on the site, except if chosen by the blog owner. Registration is required to own or post in a weblog. All the basic and original features of the site are free-to-use. However, some features are not available in the free plan: install PHP plugins, customize theme

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...

, write JavaScript, domain mapping, domain registration, removal of ads, website redirection, video upload, storage upgrades... In September 2010, it was announced that Windows Live Spaces,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

's blogging service, would be closing and that Microsoft would partner with WordPress.com for blogging services. In December 2019, WordPress.com gave SFTP and PHPMyAdmin access to Business and eCommerce plans. As of 2021, 41% of websites are built on WordPress.

Advertising

If the free plan is in use, readers see ads on WordPress.com pages, though WordPress.com claims that it is rare. On its support pages, WordPress.com says it "sometimes display advertisements on your blog to help pay the bills". In order to remove the ads, users need to purchase a Plan that starts at $4 a month.

Censorship

In August 2007, Adnan Oktar, a Turkish creationist, was able to get a Turkish court to block Internet access to WordPress.com for all of Turkey. His lawyers argued that blogs on WordPress.com contained libellous material on Oktar and his colleagues which WordPress.com staff was unwilling to remove. WordPress.com has been intermittently blocked in China. Matt Mullenweg commented: "WordPress.com supports free speech and doesn't shut people down for 'uncomfortable thoughts and ideas, in fact, we're blocked in several countries because of that." In August 2018, WordPress.com began removing several pages that suggested the

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and t ...

was a hoax.

Politics

In advance of the

Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey The Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey was a national survey designed to gauge support for legalising same-sex marriage in Australia. The survey was held via the postal service between 12 September and 7 November 2017. Unlike voting in ...

of 2017, a rainbow banner was placed at the top of the WordPress Reader. This was also done in June 2015, in celebration of the US Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right.

References

External links