WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.[5] WordPress is installed on a web server, which either is part of an Internet hosting service or is a network host itself; the first case may be on a service like WordPress.com, for example, and the second case is a computer running the software package WordPress.org.[6] An example of the second case is a local computer configured to act as its own web server hosting WordPress for single-user testing or learning purposes. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system. WordPress was used by more than 26.4% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2016.[7] WordPress is the easiest and most popular blogging system in use on the Web,[8] at more than 60 million websites.[9]
It was released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg[1] and Mike Little,[10] as a fork of b2/cafelog. The license under which WordPress software is released is the GPLv2 (or later) from the Free Software Foundation.[11]