A brief history of web publishing - from HTML and HTML editors to WordPress

1. A brief history of
Web Publishing
By Brian Duffy
wpapplied.com

2. A history of HTML
• In 1990 there was no easy way to find,
download and view documents
• Tim Berners Lee invented a system that
would:
– store documents in one central place (i.e. a web
server)
– Make it possible to download and view a
document with a single click (i.e. a web browser)
– Allow people to find new documents by clicking
on “links” inside other documents

3. Tim Berners Lee

4. What Tim did
• Tim invented the World Wide Web
– A system for allowing people to browse through
web-pages. This includes:
• HTML for creating and linking documents
• Web browsers for viewing documents
– Instead of licensing and selling his idea – Tim
made it free for everyone

5. Problems with HTML
• Difficult to learn
– There are a number of tags you have to learn off
• The process of updating content on a website
was awkward. You had to:
1. Learn HTML
2. connect to your server with FTP
3. download the page you wanted to update
4. edit the page
5. Upload the updated file again via FTP

6. What HTML looks like

7. HTML Editors
• HTML Editors provided a WYSIWG interface
that generated HTML for you
– WYSIWG: What you see is what you get
– Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver
• HTML editors meant that you no longer had to
learn HTML
– Although it still helped as the editors often made
mistakes

8. A HTML Editor

9. How HTML editors helped
HTML Editors removed one step from the process of
updating content on a website
1. Learn HTML
2. connect to your server with FTP
3. download the page you wanted to update
4. edit the HTML
5. Upload the updated file again via FTP

10. Content Management Systems
• A content management system (CMS) is
software that runs on a web server that
allows you to easily publish, editing and
manage your sites content from a central
interface
• Content includes text, graphics, photos, video,
audio or anything else that appears on a web
page.

11. How a CMS works
• A CMS integrates with your sites design and
allows you to store your content in a database
• CMS removes all but one step from the
process of updating content on your site
1. Learn HTML
2. connect to your server with FTP
3. download the page you wanted to update
4. edit the page
5. Upload the updated file again via FTP

12. What a CMS looks like

13. WordPress
• WordPress is the leading CMS and powers
21% of all sites on the web
– including BBC, Ford, Sony, New York Times
• It’s open-source which means you have full
control (unlike SquareSpace, Wix etc). In other
words:
– It’s 100% free all the time, for everyone
– If it doesn’t work the exact way you want, then
you can change it
– If it breaks then you have the power to fix it