There are a lot of ways to start a website these days. Every hosting company seems to have some tool to allow you to build a rudimentary site. Some tout WYSIWYG creators or template systems, others integrate a blogging system of their own. Google has entered the fray with Google Sites and there’s always the tried and true Dreamweaver.
But what if you just want to get up and going– you know, take that first step and get some content out there? You want your site to look good but you don’t want to have to edit every page by hand to get the content in there. And what about updating content in the future? You also want to have more control than some of the big blogging sites currently give you and have a solid platform for growth in the future.
Enter WordPress. It’s not just blogging software you know. With the blogging explosion in the recent past, WordPress was born and has grown some hefty legs along the way. It has been steadily raising the bar in the past couple of years, and has moved from just a blogging system to becoming a platform.
By platform I mean that you can build sites with WordPress that are not just blogs, but are robust, flavorful sites with a lot of features and power. And here’s the elements that make WordPress so powerful:
- A huge number of themes
- Tons of plugins
- Moderated multi user contribution
- Easy content creation
- Multi domain capable with WordPress Mu
If you install WordPress on your own server account, which isn’t hard, you then have ultimate control over this system allowing you to run ads or monetize your blog as you see fit. Most of the big blog hosting sites out there just don’t give you this level of control. Hosting companies like DreamHost, which is a green, carbon neutral company to boost, allow easy one-click install of WordPress to get you going fast.
In this series I’ll discuss each of the points outlined above to give you more detail on each facet of the platform so you can see the true power of WordPress. Stay tuned for part 2 on themes.
