Len Wilton

A lot of work goes into creating a blog. It is important to make the right decisions at the start of process – one of the most critical choices is which blogging platform to use. For me there is only one answer – WordPress – and here are some of the reasons why.

The WordPress Community

There are a lot of people involved with making WordPress better. From the creators of the core program, to plugin and theme developers right down to the people using WordPress on a daily basis. There are WordPress users answering questions in forums and writing about WordPress on their blogs – the community is massive, knowledgeable and willing to share – and it’s the backbone of everything great about WordPress.

WordPress Plugins

A plugin is a tool that adds extra functionality to a blog. They are usually free and you can get a plugin to do just about any task you think of relating to the management of a blog.

There are plugins that back up your database and email it to you on a daily basis, there are plugins that help get your blog listed highly in search engines, plugins to tell you how many people have visited your blog and plugins to help locate broken links.

There are just so many plugins around it would be impossible to create a definitive list as it would be out of date as soon as it was published.

WordPress Themes

A WordPress theme is the skin you wrap your blog in. It is more than the overall design as the way the theme has been built defines how your blog works. For example, the category list may appear on your blog in one theme, but not another, this is because one theme is built that way, while the other is not.

Most WordPress themes are available for free and can be installed and activated through the admin area of your blog. You can change the way your blog looks with just a few clicks of the mouse.

WordPress is easy to update and customize

The WordPress dashboard is very easy to understand and creating new posts and uploading images is simple. It can be used as an out of the box solution, or, if you want to get your hands dirty, you can delve into the WordPress code and develop it to your heart’s content.

A WordPress blog can be updated through a browser from anywhere in the world by any registered member. Member accounts can be created manually or automatically (through a registration process) and each member can be given a different membership level – subscriber, contributor, author, editor or administrator.

WordPress is free!

The core WordPress files are free! Most of the plugins are free! And there are tons of WordPress themes available for free!

The only thing you have to pay for (if hosting WordPress on your own domain) is the hosting and the domain name. If you already have a site and want to attach a blog to it, those costs are already covered, so you would be getting a whole next extension to your site for diddly squat.

Article Source : Why Wordpress Is The Best Platform For A Blog : ArticleBase

Stephen Thomas
Stephen Thomas has been writing about WordPress and other blogging tools for many years. He is currently writing for The Blogging Academy