WordPress: terms A to Z
Every WordPress term explained in plain English: blocks, plugins, themes, roles, and more.
WordPress has its own language. This page is your reference guide so you always know what a term means, whether it comes from our team, a plugin's settings page, or a support article.
A to C
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Admin | Short for Administrator. The highest user role on a standard WordPress site: full access to every setting and feature. See WordPress user roles explained. |
| Admin bar | The thin bar across the top of the screen when you're logged in: WordPress also calls it the Toolbar. Gives quick links to the dashboard, content editing, and more. You can hide it, and change the admin color scheme, in your user profile. |
| Admin dashboard | The behind-the-scenes control panel for your WordPress site. Accessed at yoursite.com/wp-admin. |
| Block | A single content element in the WordPress block editor: a paragraph, an image, a button, a video embed, etc. See Working with blocks. |
| Block editor | The current default WordPress content editor (also called Gutenberg). You build pages by stacking and arranging blocks. See Getting started with the block editor. |
| Block pattern | A pre-designed combination of blocks you can insert as a starting point and then customize. |
| Categories | A way to organize posts into broad topics. Each post can belong to one or more categories. |
| Classic editor | The older WordPress text editor (before blocks). Some sites still use it via the Classic Editor plugin. |
| Comment | A reader response posted below a blog post. Can be moderated (approved or deleted). |
| Core | WordPress itself: the base software, separate from themes and plugins. "Core update" means a WordPress version update. |
| CPT | Custom Post Type. A content type beyond the default posts and pages: portfolio items, team members, events, etc. Usually set up by your developer. |
| Customizer | The older WordPress design tool that lets you preview changes in real time. It only appears if your active theme supports it, so on a block theme it's usually hidden. You use the Site Editor instead. |
D to G
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | See Admin dashboard. |
| Database | WordPress stores all your content (posts, pages, settings, users) in a MySQL or MariaDB database. It's the site's memory. |
| Default theme | A theme bundled with WordPress itself, active on a new site until you install another one. The most recent is Twenty Twenty-Five. |
| Draft | A saved but unpublished version of a post or page. Only visible to logged-in users with editing access. |
| Elementor | A popular WordPress page builder plugin. See What is Elementor?. |
| Excerpt | A short summary of a post shown on blog listing pages. Can be auto-generated or written manually. |
| Featured image | The main "thumbnail" image representing a post or page: used in blog listings, social sharing, and sometimes headers. |
| Full Site Editing (FSE) | The newer WordPress approach that lets you edit headers, footers, and templates with blocks, not just page content. Uses the Site Editor. |
| Gutenberg | The code name for the WordPress block editor. Often used interchangeably with "block editor." |
H to M
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Hook | A developer concept: a point in WordPress code where you can add or modify behavior. You won't need this as a content editor. |
| htaccess | A configuration file used by Apache web servers to control redirects, security rules, and WordPress's pretty URLs. Sites on Nginx use server-block settings instead. Usually managed by your developer. |
| Media library | The section of your dashboard where all uploaded images, PDFs, and files are stored and managed. See The media library explained. |
| Menu | A set of navigation links. WordPress lets you create and manage multiple menus (primary nav, footer nav, etc.). |
| Multisite | A WordPress feature that runs multiple websites from one installation and admin dashboard. |
N to P
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Page | A static content item, like "About Us," "Contact," or "Services." Unlike posts, pages aren't listed in date order, and they don't use categories or tags by default. |
| Page builder | A plugin that adds a visual, drag-and-drop editor to WordPress. Elementor and Beaver Builder are popular examples. |
| Permalink | The permanent URL of a post or page. WordPress lets you control the format (e.g. yoursite.com/post-name). See Permalinks & URL structure. |
| PHP | The programming language WordPress is built on. Your host runs a PHP version. Keep it current. |
| Plugin | An add-on that extends WordPress's functionality. There are plugins for SEO, forms, e-commerce, security, and thousands more. See What are plugins?. |
| Post | A dated, categorizable piece of content, like a blog article. Unlike pages, posts appear in reverse-chronological order on your blog. |
| Preview | A view of how a draft page or post will look to visitors before you publish it. |
R to S
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Revision | An automatically saved earlier version of a post or page. WordPress keeps a history so you can undo changes. See Undo mistakes with revisions. |
| Role | A set of permissions assigned to a WordPress user. Common roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber. |
| RSS feed | A machine-readable list of your latest posts. Lets readers subscribe using feed readers or aggregators. |
| Settings | The configuration section of the WordPress dashboard: general info, reading/writing, permalinks, etc. |
| Shortcode | A short text code wrapped in square brackets (e.g. [contact-form]) that a plugin swaps for real content. They still work, and many plugins still use them, but blocks now cover a lot of the same jobs. |
| Sidebar | A column alongside the main content area on some page layouts. Often contains widgets. |
| Site editor | The newer WordPress tool for editing your entire site's design (including headers, footers, and templates) using blocks. |
| Slug | The URL-friendly text in a post or page address. For yoursite.com/about-us, the slug is about-us. |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer: the older name for the encryption that makes your site use HTTPS. The current version is called TLS. Usually handled by your host. |
Each step outwards adds power the role before it does not have. That is why the safe choice is the least powerful role that still lets the person do their job.
Read this as text
WordPress has five built-in roles, and they are not five separate lists of permissions. They run in order of power, from Subscriber up to Administrator, and each one is a step up from the one before it. Subscriber is the smallest: a Subscriber can log in and update their own profile, but cannot create or edit any content.
A Contributor can write and edit their own draft posts but cannot publish. Their work goes into Pending Review for an Editor or Administrator to approve. An Author can write, edit, publish, and delete their own posts, but cannot edit other people’s content and cannot create or edit pages. An Editor can create, edit, publish, and delete any post or page, including content created by other users, but cannot change site settings, install plugins, or manage users. An Administrator can do everything: install and delete plugins, change the theme, manage all users, access all settings, and edit any content.
Because the roles run in order of power, picking one is mechanical: start at the least powerful and stop at the first role that covers what the person actually needs. Subscriber suits a member of a members-only section, Contributor a guest blogger or intern, Author a team member or contractor who writes blog posts, Editor a content manager or marketing team member, and Administrator only the primary business owner and the Chykalophia team.
These are the roles WordPress builds in. Some plugins add custom roles of their own alongside them: WooCommerce, for example, adds a Shop Manager role for store management.
T to Z
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Tags | A more specific way to label posts than categories. Optional, but useful for organizing by topic. |
| Template | A layout structure used for a type of page, e.g. a "Blog Post" template defines how all posts are displayed. |
| Theme | The design layer for your WordPress site. It controls overall layout, style, fonts, and colors. See WordPress themes explained. |
| Trash | Deleted posts and pages go here first. You can restore them or permanently delete them. |
| Update | A new version of WordPress, a theme, or a plugin. Updates include bug fixes, new features, and security patches. |
| Upload | Adding a file (image, PDF, video) to your site's media library. |
| User | Anyone with a login account on your WordPress site. Users have different roles with different levels of access. |
| Widget | A self-contained block of content or functionality you add to a widget area, such as a sidebar or footer. Classic themes use widget areas; a block theme doesn't. You place blocks wherever you want that content instead. |
| WooCommerce | The open-source commerce platform for WordPress, built as a plugin. Turns a WordPress site into an online store. See What is WooCommerce?. |
| WordPress.com | An all-in-one hosted service run by Automattic. WordPress itself is still the open-source software underneath; what WordPress.com adds is managed hosting, with updates, security, and backups handled for you. See WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. |
| WordPress.org | The home of the WordPress project: where you download the free, open-source software and find its plugin and theme directories. Running it on hosting you pay for yourself is called self-hosting. |
| wp-admin | The URL path to your WordPress dashboard: yoursite.com/wp-admin. |
| wp-content | The folder on your server where themes, plugins, and uploaded media are stored. |
| WYSIWYG | "What You See Is What You Get." An editor where what you see while editing looks like what visitors will see. The block editor is a WYSIWYG editor. |
| Yoast SEO | A popular WordPress plugin that helps manage page titles, meta descriptions, sitemaps, and SEO settings. |
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