A lot of work goes into creating a blog. It is important to make the right decisions at the start of the process – one of the most critical choices is which platform to use. For me there is only one answer – WordPress – and here are some of the reasons why.
The WordPress Community
WordPress, without the community of plugin developers, theme designers and coders who have spent hours and hours writing, testing and tweaking code, would be like a ship in the desert – lost! But with the community, and the loyalty it shows, it is one of the most empowering online beasts that’s ever been coded.
WordPress has allowed people around the world to extend their lives in a way that may never have seemed possible just a few short years ago. For virtually no cost at all anybody who has the mind to can create an online presence and start expressing themselves in whatever way they choose – be that through writing, publishing photographs or sharing video content.
Whatever the choice – there is a platform and an audience for it all.
WordPress also provides the platform for many wannabe business owners and entrepreneurs who have craved a way to set themselves up in business for very little outlay. A WordPress powered business can be run from home and started in your spare time. This gives you the chance to test the water before taking the big leap.
But the real beauty of the WordPress community is its desire to innovate, create and share, and being part of that community means you have access to the tools that can make your own online presence a bigger success.
What are these tools?
Plugins and themes are the core tools of the WordPress community. Plugins add extra functionality to any WordPress set up and themes make everything look pretty.
What does a WordPress plugin do?
A plugin can do just about anything. Seriously.
There are plugins that back up your database and email it to you on a daily basis, there are plugins that help get your blog listed highly in search engines, plugins to tell you how many people have visited your blog and plugins to help locate broken links.
There are just so many plugins around it would be impossible to create a definitive list as it would be out of date as soon as it was published.
There is an essential list of WordPress plugins that almost every blog should have. These plugins are helping hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) of people run their blogs. At the time of writing this post the most popular WordPress plugin is the infamous All in One SEO Pack which has been downloaded 4,568,718 times. That is quite a figure for a piece of software that has been created and distributed for free within an online community.
What about WordPress themes – what are they?
Another side of the WordPress community is theme development. In simple terms the theme you use defines how your blog looks and works. A new theme is very easy to download/install and will change the whole look of your blog the second it is activated.
There are hundreds of free themes around, but a growing premium themes market is also thriving.
Premium themes have to be purchased, and while that may seem like an expense you do not wish to undertake, I would like to suggest that you spend some time looking into the advantages of a premium theme if you are serious about blogging.
The beauty of premium themes is twofold – they look great as they have been created by experienced designers/coders and they are often updated. Paying for something like a premium themes ensures the developers maintain a decent level of customer service. This cannot always be said for plugin developers who are quite often well meaning PHP experimentalists.
WordPress is very search engine friendly
Blogs have a reputation for being very search engine friendly. This is absolutely true.
The term ‘post’ is used in most blogs (think of a post as an article) and when a post is published the blogging software will send out something called a ‘ping’. This ping alerts the various spiders that crawl the web that a new post has been published on your blog and the spiders will come a calling and index the new post, often within minutes of publication.
Blogs are also updated on a more regular basis than most standard company websites, which ensures the search engines see activity on the blog/domain and visit regularly.
Easy to update and customise
The WordPress dashboard is very easy to understand and creating new posts and uploading images is simple. It can be used as an out of the box solution, or, if you want to get your hands dirty, you can delve into the WordPress code and develop it to your heart’s content.
A WordPress blog can be updated through a browser from anywhere in the world by any registered member. Member accounts can be created manually or automatically (through a registration process) and each member can be given a different membership level – subscriber, contributor, author, editor or administrator.
It’s free!
The core WordPress files are free! Most of the plugins are free! And there are tons of WordPress themes available for free!
The only thing you have to pay for (if hosting WordPress on your own domain) is the hosting and the domain name. If you already have a site and want to attach a blog to it, those costs are already covered, so you would be getting a whole next extension for diddly squat.
If you are just starting out and looking to get online; hosting can be purchased very cheaply these days. Many hosting companies allow monthly subscription too, so you don’t have to stay tied into a contract for a long period of time.
