Last updated: 21st July 2009
What is WordPress?
Probably the most widely used blogging platform that is available as hosted version (at WordPress.com) where a free blog can be set up in a matter of minutes. A selection of 50-60 templates (themes) are available but only a handful can be adapted to change colours, header image (to include a logo etc). Additional widgets (like polls, links, tags and text) can be easily added into the sidebar(s) of the blog to help navigation and layout of the blog. Users might find the theme and The software can be installed on a webserver for free (it is open source) and then the options for adapting the blog are almost limitless with a really vibrant developer community producing thousands of themes and hundreds of plug-ins to add features to your blog.
Why use WordPress?
A free blog can be started at WordPress.com in a few minutes which will have an address like myblog.wordpress.com. If you start to outgrow the restrictions of the free version (need more themes, or want to have an address like www.myblog.com) you have several options, but the software you use (the admin screens) look exactly the same for the free version or if you pay for hosting on your own web server. You can import and export your content easily even if you decide to move from WordPress.com or leave it on WordPress.com and pay a small fee to access additional features.
How much does it cost?
Setting up a blog on WordPress is free, but you can add your own Domain (eg. www.myblog.com) for $9.97 per year (via PayPal) plus the cost of the domain itself (as little as £5 per year). To be able to change some aspects of the designs (eg text colour etc is another $14.97 per year)
To set up your own webserver with WordPress installed on it will cost more and is more complicated but will give you more flexibility with thousands of themes available. However you would be responsible for things like backing up the site or get someone to do it for you.
A conversation is not just about publishing, it’s about linking
Blogs and especially WordPress make publishing so much easier than having to learn HTML, but they are really powerful when they talk to each other. A simple, passive form of this is a blogroll which is a list of blogs that is often put in the sidebar which shows the types of blogs that you read and might be relevant. But every time you link to a specific post in another blog they will be notified by something called a ping or trackback. This is done automatically and is a bit like leaving a comment without having to write something on their blog. The more you link, the more people you involve in the conversation, the more people you show you are listening to.
Next>> What to blog about?