With WordPress you can create a website quite easily, even if you’re not quite sure how it all works. WordPress is very versatile, and was designed to be accessible to as many people as possible. Also, there are a few basic files that allow you to get under the hood, without too much effort, and make significant changes to your site.
But be careful! Such modifications concern only a few files and are reserved for seasoned users, or even geeks!
Let’s dive into the core of WordPress!
The importance of the Core for a WordPress site
To put it simply, the Core of WordPress refers to the core of basic files that make up a WordPress website. It corresponds to everything in the .zip archive you download from the official website, worpress.org.
Like the heart in a human being, the WP core is essential to the proper functioning of our website.
So it goes without saying that a corrupted or modified file would not do our content manager any good at all.
This set of files is both the main organ and the neuralgic system of the site, which is why the slightest intervention at this level is perfectly inadvisable.
An error at this level would render any subsequent update impossible. As you can see, this situation should be avoided at all costs…
Apart from performing Core updates, i.e. replacing an old version of WP with a new one, that’s pretty much all you’ll be doing if you’re a novice user. And don’t forget to precede this kind of experiment with a good old-fashioned backup 😉
The structure of a well-functioning WP
Your website is made up of four main parts:
To get a visual idea of how the core of WordPress works “solo”, let’s make a bold attempt to remove the theme and plugin files from our website, and observe the user interface:
If you play around with this (either via your server’s file manager or locally, in the wp-content folder), you’ll realize that it’s impossible to create or display your site with just the core files. They necessarily need a theme. That’s why some themes are already included in every new WordPress installation.
WordPress core files
The Core is where you’ll find all the files you need to run WordPress. That’s why it’s so important not to make modifications blindly, and a quick look at the official documentation gives you a good idea of where you’re going to end up (careful, it’ll break!)…
The WordPress core creates a set of functionalities that allow you to :
- access to the WP administration dashboard
- manage users
- create and modify articles and pages
- upload multimedia content
- delete content
- add categories, taxonomies, tags…
- etc
Of course, we won’t be able to give you a complete inventory of all the associated functions. Nor will we go any further into technical explanations, since our aim is limited to a brief overview of this strange beast, which is not so easy to get to grips with…
Let’s start by introducing the two essential files! They’ll be of great assistance to our site in many cases.
- The.htaccess file (hypertext access): this file controls access to the site’s files and folders, as well as the overall structure of the site’s permalinks. It can also be used for many other purposes.
- The wp-config.php file: includes a number of essential WordPress parameters. It can be used to establish the database connection, modify the memory limit of our installation, activate or deactivate automatic updates and set up page caching. It also includes WP_DEBUG debugging constants, and much more besides.
The main core folders
We will now discuss the three main core folders: “wp-admin”, “wp-includes” and “wp-content”.
The wp-admin folder
This folder contains most of the files in the WordPress administration interface. Each of its pages corresponds to a part of the site administration functionalities.
Let’s take one file in particular: admin.php
Its role is to activate a number of “critical” functionalities, such as database connection and dashboard loading, and to check users and their authorizations (administration, editing, publishing rights, etc.).
The wp-includes folder
This folder stores all the “rest of the files” that make the site work. If “wp-admin” is the administration tools manager, “wp-includes” is the one in charge of doing everything possible with WP…
If you open the directory, you’ll see over a hundred files.
As you can see, as with the wp-admin folder, we won’t be modifying anything in this folder. We’ll leave that task to the developers of our favourite CMS.
The wp-content folder
This folder contains, among other things, the plugins, themes and media folders.
This is the folder where users make their modifications.
Remember, the previous two folders were inviolable (wp-admin & wp-includes). Indeed, only the WordPress development team could save modifications in these folders. wp-content is the folder where third-party developers and users can develop their site.
In this way, it’s possible to piggyback on the original WordPress code, and extend the original possibilities almost indefinitely.
Sometimes, a plugin becomes an integral part of the Core, as was the case with Gutenberg, the current editor. At first, it was just a plugin, relegated to the wp-content folder… Now it’s a full-featured part of the main software.
A final word
We’ve only given a quick overview of the WordPress core to avoid being too boring.
Even so, the knowledge we’ve covered will hopefully enable you to solve some of your own problems. At any rate, you’ll know where to start looking.
If you’d like to delve deeper into the subject, the official documentation, in French, will be the ideal gateway to maximum information.
You can also glean additional tips from the official website of the French-speaking community.
And of course, stay tuned! We’ll soon be covering new WordPress topics…
