Blogging With WordPress
WordPress blogging software offers everything you could want to publish your blog in an intuitive user friendly interface for both visitors and publishers alike. You’ll enjoy the state-of-the-art technology updated regularly by a dedicated development community including a variety of easy to implement themes to choose from that will compliment the image you hope to present to your public on the Internet. Don’t be suspect just because it’s free!
WordPress sprang from Michel Valdrighi’s b2/cafelog package which began in 2001 and would be refined as WordPress by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little from 2003 forward. From humble beginnings a short time ago the robust package now runs on millions of sites today. The fact that this includes such notables as Yahoo!, The New York Times and People is due in no small part to the solid support from WordPress.org where you will not only find downloads but extensive information on installation and use.
Wordpress is available for download for installation on your own web host or you can sign up at WordPress.com and publish your blog for free. However, with the free hosting your site may be subject to their advertising, including Google AdWords, and it precludes you from developing an identity on your own url; the domain will be wordpress.com/yourname instead. Depending on your selection of hosting services WordPress setup may be available as part of the Fantastico package of scripts.
If you plan on doing more than blogging, say publishing an online book or collaborating on a publication, there may be better choices. Drupal, for example, offers wider options in this regard. But, for blogging with style while and strict compliance to web standards WordPress is your obvious choice. Additionally, it provides every feature you need including visitor or user registration, pingbacks, catagories, XML feeds, link management, uploads RSS for podcasing and more.
In addition to a wide variety of themes there are numerous plugins available for administration, social bookmarking, catching and handling comment spam and formatting. The list is far to extensive to list and constantly being added to. You can find out more at the WordPress Extension page. If you’re familiar enough with PHP scripting and MySQL, you can edit the code withing the WordPress interface and customize your installation even further. A word of caution here. You’ll want to carefully note your changes as it is recommended you undo changes of an existing theme before performing a version upgrade. Otherwise, there is no other reason not to try WordPress for your blog.
