Melanie from Blogging Basics 101 asked for links to blog posts on why you love your blogging platform of choice. Since I don’t think I’ve ever written it out, I thought I’d try to put my thoughts together in this post. I’m sure I’ll miss something though, so if you love WordPress, will you leave a comment for me telling me what you love about WordPress?
- Total Control: I admit it. I’m a control freak. I want to have total control over my blog. I don’t want someone else telling me what I can or can’t put on my blog (that’s a negative for WordPress.com which is different than WordPress.org — the self-hosted version). If I’m going to put all my time and effort into writing and designing a blog, I want to be able to do stuff on my own.
- Open source software: All of my points will probably lead back to the first — having total control. WordPress is open source software. You may think you don’t care what that means, but let me tell you why you should care. Open source software is not only free (you don’t pay anything for WordPress), you have access to the source code. I know, you’re thinking, “what on earth would I do with source code?” Well, you may not do anything with it, but the fact that the source code is available for everyone means more benefits to you. If you wanted to create a custom widget, you could get a programmer from just about anywhere to set it up for you. If you were dealing with closed source software, you would not have the same flexibility.
- Widgets, Plugins and Themes: Because WordPress.org is open source, many programmers out there have shared widgets, plugins and themes with you for free. You can find a Plugin to do just about anything you would want to do on your blog. A widget is basically a block of code you can add to your sidebars to customize what’s shown there. Themes are plentiful and customization is easy if you know html/css.
- Easy to use: I think WordPress is very easy to use once you give it a try. I know many people who think that it’s WordPress that’s difficult to use when in fact, they are having trouble with css or html in their theme. The newest super-cool update to WP 2.7 has really blown me away with the user interface upgrades they did. If you haven’t given 2.7 a look, I highly recommend it. And really, if you had WordPress setup for you — theme and all, it would be a piece of cake to go in and just write…well, as far as the software’s concerned
- Web hosting: In order to use WordPress.org, you have to pay for web hosting somewhere. This is probably equal to paying for an upgraded account on TypePad as far as costs go, but you can host any number of domains and blogs under most web hosting accounts. Not only that, but you have a little more flexibility with your own web hosting account — should you ever want to experiment with say, forum software, you are ready to go with your web host.
My disclaimer is that I’m a techie type. I like to get under the hood and mess with stuff I absolutely love WordPress for allowing me to do that, but you don’t have to be a techie to use it.
Now it’s your turn — why do you love WordPress? or what has scared you from trying WordPress?
Subscribe by Email
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I really un-heart WP. But it’s not my regular blog host and when I am there, I’m using wp.com. Maybe that has something to do with it.
[Reply]
Plugins, plugins, plugins. I love them!!
[Reply]