Key Components of a WordPress Site
There are some things that need a bit of explaining before we get much deeper. For lack of a better term, we’ll call them “components.” Components represent the main parts of a WordPress site, including the actual files that make things go, and the database that houses all of the data. Together, these two components - the files and database - generate the web pages for your site. Once generated, there are two central types of these web pages, the Admin area that only you see, and the public pages that the whole world can see. Let's take a closer look at each of these different components.

WordPress Core Files
When you go to WordPress.org and download a copy of WordPress, you are down­loading the WordPress core files. It’s a big folder full of files and a few subfolders full of even more files. Once you download and unzip the WordPress package, you’ll notice that most of the file and folder names begin with a “wp-” prefix.

The WordPress core files are the things that make WordPress tick, the things that make WordPress a complete software package. Most of these files you’ll never touch. A few of them you’ll touch very rarely, and a certain subset of these files you’ll be in and out of all the time, especially when building a theme.

The WordPress Database
To get WordPress installed and running, you will need to set up and configure a MySQL database. The WordPress core files don’t actually contain any of your site's content, they merely provide the functionality required to display the content stored in the database. All of your blog posts, plugin settings, and site options are contained in the database.

This can be a bit of an abstract concept, especially since the database is something you may never actually see. It’s not even a “file” on your server that you could see and download (unless it's a backup copy). It just kind of lives in the cloud that is your server, humming along and doing it’s thing.

Despite being this elusive and abstract entity, the database is arguably the most important part of your WordPress site. All the Posts, Pages, Revisions, Comments, Users, and all of your other content and settings reside exclusively within the data­base. Even if you had a total server meltdown and lost everything, with a backup copy of the database you would be okay. You could reinstall WordPress, find a workable theme, and be back up and running in minutes while you worked on rebuilding the design. On the other hand, if you also lost the database, you would have lost every single bit of content on your site forever. In other words, don’t lose your database!

The Back End
The back end of WordPress, heretofore known as the Admin area, is the part of WordPress that is seen only by you, your co-authors, and your site administrators. You view this area directly through a web browser and it is used to create and control all of the content and otherwise manage the site. This is essentially a secret hidden area which normal visitors will never see and likely don’t care about.

The Front End
The end result of these various WordPress components is the part of your site that visitors actually see and care about: the front end. The front end of your Word­Press-powered site consists of all your site's publicly available web pages. Posts, Pages, Archives, everything.

So let's put it together and see how the front end is generated. First, the content you create in the Admin area is stored in the database. Then, the core files interact with the database to render the website for your visitors. The front end is where WordPress brings the magic together and makes it happen.

One Template, Many Pages
If you are a web designer, you’re probably already at least a little familiar with Cas­cading Style Sheets (CSS). It’s such a beautiful concept. A single CSS file controls the design for lots of pages. So if one day you decide that your dark-red background color should be a little lighter red, you can make one little edit and cause a sweep­ing design change to your site (as opposed to opening hundreds of pages and mak­ing the change on each one). That’s what a CMS like WordPress does, only instead of abstracting design away, it abstracts the content away.

With a template system like WordPress, you can make a change to the template and change the way all the pages that use that template are displayed. Perhaps you want to display the date above each Post title instead of below? No problem, just change the template. In this day and age, HTML isn’t for actual content, just structuring content.

Powerful, Flexible and Extensible
You can witness the power and flexibility of the template system very easily, be­cause WordPress allows you to quickly change the entire template you are using with just a few clicks. Find a new theme you like while browsing the web? You can upload it to your own site and activate it in seconds. All your content will then flow into this theme auto-magically! Its a wonder to behold, but remember not to change your theme too often or your visitors will be lost and confused.

The same things that make WordPress themes flexible also make them extensible. For example, adding new content to your sidebar is likely as easy as opening your sidebar.php and adding in the new stuff. Your theme might even be widget-ready, meaning you can add, alter, or remove content and functionality from your sidebar (or any other widget-ready area) without looking at any code at all.

Tools of the Trade
You are going to need an internet connection. Shocking, we know. What else?

A Domain Name
Since we are working with the self-hosted version of WordPress, we are going to need an environment to work. That’s what “self” means – bring your own environ­ment. The first step is getting a domain name (webhostingart.com = a domain name). If you’ve never gone through this process before, don’t worry it’s really not too big of a deal, despite the often horrendous user-interface of many of the major retailers. GoDaddy.com is a popular choice for purchasing domains.

Web Host / Server
Owning a domain name is half of the equation. Now you need a web server to point that domain toward. The web server will then do it’s thing and serve up your website. You don’t need to buy your domain and hosting at the same place, and in fact, we advise against it. For example, a hosting company doesn’t have a whole lot of incentive to offer you support in moving your hosting to a different server, should that ever become necessary. Hosting is more expensive than domain names, but for low to medium traffic sites, even basic hosting plans are adequate.