WordPress Review: Most Popular Blogging Platform
WordPress is a free, open source content management system intended for blogs. It is one of the most popular content management systems for blogs, and it can be adapted to serve a variety of purposes, such as displaying static web pages. WordPress is the reincarnation of an older blogging system called b2\cafelog. It competes with a sister-system called b2evolution, but WordPress unquestionably has the higher market share. WordPress was first released in 2003, and it competed with Movable Type. Since then, it has progressed to its latest version (2.7.1) and won a Packt Open Source CMS Award in 2007.
As a result of the landslide of users adopting the WordPress platform, there are websites with reams of free templates and plug-ins produced by professional programmer/designers and amateurs alike. Several of the available plug-ins are easy-to-install snippets that convert the blog-oriented platform into a multi-faceted page that can allow for static content, welcome screens, and more.
Widgets, which are self-contained features, can be moved around the page and configured without having to edit the WordPress core source code. Many of the plug-ins, widgets, and themes can be installed from within the administration interface with a few clicks. This feature allows those without any programming knowledge to customize their blogs with tools and themes. For more advanced users, you can actually edit the HTML and PHP from within the WordPress administrator area, which eliminates the hassle of having to upload a new file every time you make a small change.
Another feature that really comes in handy for inexperienced users is that it comes with a search engine-friendly format, so the website is already structured to accept optimized content and get better search results. This is an invaluable feature for anyone trying to make a little money off of their blog. Speaking of money, there are a bunch of widgets you can install to do exactly that. AdSense and other pay-per-click advertisement widgets will generate passive income as you write. You can do the same thing on any other website, but WordPress makes the job a little easier.
A major problem with WordPress is security. It's not necessarily because the current release hasn't filled in the security holes—it's because most WordPress blogs are running on older versions. Some are even running on 1.x versions! As a content management system progresses, it becomes (theoretically) more secure. WordPress suffers from a compatibility problem with its plug-ins and the custom-coding a lot of people do to make their blog work as a website. Because of that, it becomes impossible to do the automatic updates through the administration area, and it's a huge hassle to re-code an entire website every time a new release of the CMS comes out.
“Doing things the hard way” goes completely against the mentality of WordPress. You can create, manage, and assign security levels to new writers in a few clicks of a button. You can create another blog on the same installation. Each aspect is carefully crafted so that nearly anyone who can operate a web browser will be able to create their own blog, whether it's on their own rented space or one of the free blogs available on the WordPress website.
WordPress is the perfect solution for anyone who isn't a techie but wants to put up a website or blog. You sacrifice a lot of the power you could get from other content management systems, but that's to be expected when it's designed for a specific purpose. The entire platform is geared for ease-of-use and automated installations, so you can put up a respectable, money-making blog without getting your hands dirty.
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