Did you browse the web today? There's a good chance you opened a WordPress site.

WordPress is the code that runs 34 percent of all websites, making it by far the most popular tool for building a website. The open-source software, which is a free download, includes everything you need to run a website or blog on any server you want. Millions of people have done just that, building everything from personal blogs to small business homepages to publications read by millions.

Not bad for an 11-megabyte download.

WordPress dates back to 2003, the early days of blogging. There were plenty of CMS options back then, but WordPress set itself apart by focusing on the needs of writers as opposed to web developers. It was easy to create new pages and posts, for example, and to add custom widgets to the sidebar.

It grew beyond blogs, however, thanks to an ever-growing ecosystem of themes and plugins. These allow you to turn WordPress into basically any kind of website—a small business homepage, an artist's portfolio, even a forum. Some of these plugins and themes are available free at wordpress.org, while many more are sold by third-party developers.

There are easier systems out there for creating a website, sure. And there are other free options too. But WordPress manages to be fairly easy to use while also being endlessly customizable, which is probably why it took over the web.

Automate WordPress With Zapier

Want to connect your website to other web services? With Zapier you can connect WordPress with thousands of apps to automatically post to social networks when you publish on your site or create WordPress posts from what you share elsewhere.

These are just a few examples. Learn about some of the most popular ways to automate WordPress with Zapier, check out our WordPress integrations, or create your own WordPress workflow from scratch.