Every time I recommend a friend of mine to blog, one of the usual queries (if not the first) is how do I blog? True, every other social network is offering you a blog these days. You also got Blogger, WordPress, Live Journal, etc. But the most common answer to this question is ‘WordPress’. I will explain my reasons – why.
Why use
WordPress?
Blogging is about expressing your views and opinions about a topic/theme as effectively as possible. The blogging system you use, thus, should be as less-intrusive in the process of blogging as possible. Once you install WordPress, WordPress will take care of everything else and let you focus on writing blogs. there is no other blogging tool with the ease of writing posts with WordPress or one that has a media library as powerful and as simplistic as WordPress.
However, no matter how simple the tool can be – there is always some learning curve. The good thing about WordPress is that this learning curve is almost non-existent. I have been now blogging on WordPress for over 2 years (I started in June 07) and I never faced a hindrance where I would have to look for another solution.
WordPress also has its set of richly developed plug-ins, most of them contributed by an extremely active community. To add to that, WordPress is very easy to code and design. In fact, of all the CMSs out there, there is hardly a CMS as easy as WordPress.
If you are new to blogging and looking out to learn stuff from references, do check these people out. I learned loads from them:
- Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)
- Lorelle VanFossen
- Cats Who Code.com
- and check out all the good things on wordpress.org
All good things said and done, one of the real good reasons for using WordPress is its theming support. Yes, almost every CMS has a theming engine – true! But WordPress is both simple and powerful at the same time. To add to that, there are numbers of awesome WordPress themes available for you to use (like I do), or if you want you can design your own theme (like the one here on Digimantra) – it’s very easy.
WordPress 2.8.3 has just been released, head over to wordpress.org to try it out now or if you already blog with WordPress, upgrade today.
Also watch out for WordPress 2.9 coming soon
Have fun
Kinshuk
