WordPress is a free, open source Content Management System (CMS) that lets users quickly and easily create websites, primarily blogs. Development and maintenance is led by Matt Mullenweg, Donncha O’Caoimh and Ryan Boren, as well as a team of volunteer developers. WordPress utilizes the PHP scripting language in combination with a database access technology of the user’s choosing to dynamically create and deliver web-based content “on-the-fly.”

In plain English, that means that WordPress is a piece of software that runs on a web server and allows users to manage a website, typically a blog, without needing to worry about doing any programming on their own, writing any web pages, or even knowing any HTML or having any programming skills in particular. WordPress is a highly-customizable and extendable “front-end” that enables users to create and display web content without ever having to do anything technical whatsoever beyond the initial installation (which is often managed by the webhost itself).

WordPress gained a huge surge in popularity when rival software platform Movable Type changed its licensing terms, driving a significant number of its users away (mostly to WordPress); the growth surge for WordPress established a powerful momentum which has continued into the present, providing the platform with consistent and sustained growth in recent years as the “Web 2.0″ revolution has taken hold.

WordPress is currently in Version 2.8; this version was released on June 10th, 2009. Each major point version of WordPress is given a “code name” that the central team of web developers uses to refer to the software; the version code-names are invariably named after a famous Jazz or Blues musician. Version 1.2 (the first version of WordPress to support plugins) was code-named “Mingus” (after Charles Mingus); Version 2.7 was code-named “Coltrane” (after John Coltrane). Version 2.8 is referred to as “Baker.”

Light, sunlight, temperature, humidity, soil, and other cultural factors are necessarily of a general nature, because the plants with which we grow come from all parts of the world and have widely varying natural growing needs.

Daylight

Animals and humans have digestive juices and a complicated apparatus for transforming food into energy and growth. Plants have chlorophyll and roots. The roots take up food from the soil. The chlorophyll uses water, carbon dioxide from the air, and light to manufacture starch (which later becomes sugar) on which the plant lives and grows.

This is, of course, an oversimplification of a complicated botanical phenomenon. But it helps to explain the importance of light. Without it, and without enough of it, plants starve – not because of insufficient food, but because of inability to use it. This is the reason why few plants will live, and none will look lush for long, in a dark hall or on the top of a coffee table ten feet away from a window.

Intensity of light is important, and the intensity needed varies according to type of plant like for example the african violet plant. The amount needed by each type depends on the light available in its natural habitat. Consider, for example, the philodendrons, usually regarded as requiring less light than most plant groups. The vining types were first found climbing and draping trees in Central and South American jungles – but not in the dark. If you measured the light, you would find it far brighter than that in an awning-shaded window, for example.

This brings us to a frequent question – which window exposure is best for plants? There is no rule to go by. It depends, first, upon the window – its size, whether it is shaded by a tree or the house next door, and even whether it is in a city or country house, in winter or summer. In Connecticut a north-facing window in the country where air is clear, if it receives no shade of any kind, will usually provide good light for foliage plants, but little sunlight except for a short period in midsummer.

In the same situation, in summer, an eastern exposure has good light and sunlight in the morning; western, in the afternoon; and southern, the most sunlight of all. But move the window farther north, or into a sooty city; or shade it with even the high branches of a tree, and light intensity decreases. The farther south it moves, the more intense the light and the more hours it is available every day.

Always look at the lighting, intensity and period of light when placing plants indoors and outdoors.