subject: Five Good Reasons To Choose A Wordpress Blog [print this page] So you want to be a blogger, eh! Or maybe you need to establish a web presence. If you're new to the Internet or blogging, and want to join the ranks of WordPress users, you've got plenty to learn. But don't get scared and run away so soon! It's easier than you think. As one of the most popular blogging platforms available, you're in for a pleasant surprise if you choose to work with this open source platform. Read on to learn the advantages of using WordPress as your blogging platform of choice.
Home of Media, Social Media and Entertainment Top Dogs.
If WordPress is home to some of the biggest names in media, social media and entertainment, such as Ford Motors, Mashable, People Magazine and the New York Times, you shouldn't have to read any further in deciding whether to give WordPress the green light. Considering you're new to blogging, it's wise to read the rest of the advantages. But, seriously, WordPress ranks as the number one blogging platform for several reasons over its main rival, Google's Blogger.
Despite your newbie status you've heard of Google, right? And who outranks Google "Anything?" Due to WordPress's popular plug-ins, customization options and flexibility that Blogger lacks, WordPress trumps the number-one-ranking search engine's blogging platform, making it more appealing to media, social media and entertainment heavyweights.
No Design Skills? No Problem.No.1.
So who really needs a web designer these days when you can just choose a pre-made template to make your blog or website appealing within minutes? Hence, another advantage of WordPress is its ease of designing and re-designing your blog until you acquire the right look and feel. Best of all, there are thousands of free as well as paid themes you can choose from to download.
No Cost to Blog.No.2.
Before I even mentioned the design capabilities, I should have mentioned first and foremost, that WordPress costs nothing to set up and design. Registration time takes a couple of minutes and you're ready to start blogging, after you've designed it accordingly, of course. However, if you want to get all fancy and go pro, you can purchase a domain name through WordPress for approximately $17, which will cover you for a whole year. And if you'd like a custom WordPress theme to reflect your hobby, business, cause or interest, you can purchase a high-quality theme at a reasonable price to make your blog look and feel more like a website.
Flexibility.No.3.
As mentioned above, you can customize your blog for under $20 per year. Interestingly, if you own more than one WordPress blog, you can manoeuvre domain names from one blog to the next with no complication. This is due to the platform's open XML format (or extensive markup language used to simplify content for the Internet) that stores your content. Its main rival uses a closed format, which would take forever and a day to transfer a domain name from one blog to the next.
Plug-Ins.No.4.
What in the world are plug-ins? Plug-ins are exciting little extensions where if you have a custom domain name (in other words, self-hosted), you can integrate functions from other sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Flickr to your blog/WordPress site in just a few simple clicks. These plug-ins, or extensions, are customization tools to help you create your ideal site. The best part is you don't have to go searching elsewhere for these plug-ins as they're readily available from the WordPress dashboard.
Search Engine Optimization.No.5.
You would think that Blogger, being owned by Google, would outperform WordPress in terms of SEO (search engine optimization) capabilities. But, WordPress-powered blogs are readily optimized for the major search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing and Google in ways that Blogger isn't. This is because WordPress utilizes certain meta tags (or website information) search engines favour in order to index a site's pages correctly. These 'tags' aren't visible on the site, but the special coding ranks the site favourably with search engines over other blogging platforms.
WordPress is a fun, sophisticated, advanced, favoured, and phenomenal blogging platform, suitable for anyone and everyone interested in establishing a web presence. No longer are traditional websites necessary as WordPress's technology allows you to create a website with its extensions and flexibility. Authors, musicians, non-profit organizations, models, doctors, lawyers, magazines, publishing houses, motor companies, and social media sites alike are drawn to the power of WordPress. So go to it.
