In a world in
which technology advances faster
than a speeding locomotive,
WordPress is blogging made easy and
free! How else can you get your
message out to a potential audience
of millions worldwide and spend
exactly nothing? There may be no
such thing as a free lunch in this
world, but you can bet your bottom
dollar that there are free blogs to
be had. WordPress serves them all up
in one nifty package. The softwares
free price tag, its ease of use, and
the speed at which you can get your
blog up and running are great
reasons to use WordPress to power
your personal or business blog. An
even greater reason is the
incredibly supportive and passionate
WordPress community. In this
chapter, I introduce you to the
WordPress software so that you can
begin to discover how effective it
is as a tool for creating your blog
or Web site.
Discovering the
Benefits of WordPress
I work with first-time bloggers all
the time folks who are new to
the idea of publishing on the
Internet. One of the questions Im
most frequently asked is How can I
run a blog? I dont even know how to
code or create Web sites.
Enter WordPress. You no longer need
to worry about knowing the code,
because the WordPress blogging
software does the code part for you.
When you log in to your blog, you
have to do only two simple things to
publish your thoughts and ideas:
1. Write your post.
2.
Click a button to publish your post.
Thats it!
WordPress offers the following
competitive advantages as the most
popular blogging tool on the market:
Diversity:
Three versions of WordPress are
available to suit nearly every type
of blogger: a hosted turnkey
solution, a version to install on
the Web server of your choice, and a
multiuser version that lets you
offer blogs across a group or
organization. I go into detail about
each of these versions later in this
chapter, in the Choosing a WordPress
Platform section.
Ease of use:
WordPress setup is quick, and the software is easy to use.
Extensibility:
WordPress is extremely extensible, meaning that you can easily
obtain plugins and tools that let
you customize it to suit your
purposes.
Community of users:
WordPress has a large and loyal members-helpingmembers community
via public support forums, mailing
lists, and blogs geared to the use
of WordPress.
The following sections fill in a few details about these features
and point you to places in the book
where you can find out more about
them.
Easy to set up and
use
WordPress is one of the only blog
platforms that can brag about a
five-minute installation and
stand behind it! Signing up for the
hosted version of WordPress takes
approximately the same amount of
time.
Mind you, five minutes is an
approximate installation time.
It doesnt include the time required
to obtain domain registration and
Web hosting services or to set up
the options in the Administration
panel.
When you complete the installation,
however, the world of WordPress
awaits you. The Administration panel
is intuitive, well organized, and
easy on the eyes. Everything is
clear and logical, making it easy
for even a first-time user to see
where to go to manage settings and
options.
The WordPress software surely has
enough meat on it to keep the most
experienced developer busy and
happy. At the same time, however,
its intuitive and friendly enough to
make a novice user giddy about how
easy getting started is. Each time
you use WordPress, you can find out
something exciting and new.
