I now run four Wordpress blogs simultaneously for different purposes. I setup, install, modify, tweak, and maintain all the code myself. I’ve worked with the Wordpress core, templates/themes, plugins, and then some. I’ve had some bad days with it, but at any given day, I don’t think I would give Wordpress up for any other blogging platform out there. Here’s why:
Wordpress is constantly improving
Wordpress gets updated regularly, and it keeps improving at each release. It’s currently at version 2.6, and I like the new features like article versioning, the new plugin page, and the new theme preview feature. It’s driven by open source, so anyone can contribute the best and latest thing that people want or need. If you want to see a new feature in the next release, go ahead and write it and contribute to the source. It’s completely free and open.
Tons of Plugins
The default Wordpress bundle comes with a spam filter plugin and a plugin that allows you to print the words “Hello, Dolly” somewhere on the site. If you want more functionality, there are tons of plugins that do almost everything, from tracking user behavior, improving SEO, adding a photo gallery, or finding out which are your most popular posts.
Here are the list of plugins I can’t do without:
- Askimet spam filter
- All in One SEO Pack
- Recent Posts
- Similar Posts
- bSuite stats tracking
- Google XML Sitemaps for fuss-free sitemap creation
And here are some really recommended ones:
- WassUp even more detailed stats tracking
- WP-EMail for people to email your articles
- Google Analyticator for adding google analytics without fuss
Tons of Themes
I don’t know why but there are way too many Wordpress themes out there. So there’s a high chance that you’ll be able to find one that suites your needs. If this is not the case, hire yourself a Wordpress template/theme designer. You can find them quite easily too, and at affordable rates.
Wordpress is built on PHP
PHP is a programming language used to build of websites today. PHP isn’t the best for everything, but it’s good for Wordpress because
- There are an abundance of PHP programmers, so you can get a lot of help
- PHP is relatively straightforward to learn, code and debug
- PHP is mature, and thus compatible with most web hosting services
- PHP is also improving, and Wordpress leverages on that
Wordpress is easy to use
A friend of mine who’s surveying blogging systems says he likes the way Wordpress keeps posts and pages seperate. It just makes sense. Blogging with Wordpress isn’t rocket science at all. It just works. Before using Wordpress, I was on blogspot and I was fiddling around with blogging software, because I just couldn’t get the layout to work right or I wanted to do more stuff. But with Wordpress I’ve never needed any software. I just blog from Wordpress itself.
If there’s any reason to hate Wordpress, it’s that the themes might be a bit tricky to manipulate on your own. If you’re wanting to change the look and feel of your website extensively, you’ll need to know HTML, PHP and CSS. But then, that’s true for a lot of other blogging platforms. It’s really hard to get around that. Practically all websites run off HTML and CSS.