Why WordPress?
Posted: February 6th, 2010 | Author: Dave Yankowiak | Filed under: WordPress | View Comments
While this is the first post on my WordPress-hosted site devoted to tweaking WordPress, this is most definitely not the first time I’ve used WordPress. And WordPress is not the only blogging platform I’ve ever used. I’ve worked with blogs/websites hosted on Google’s Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous, and more. Thus far, nothing has come close to the performance, flexibility, and extendability of WordPress.
There are four factors to the awesomeness of WordPress.
Affordability
Not only is WordPress itself cheap (open source = FREE!), but hosting it is cheap. You can usually find good PHP/MySQL hosting (required if you want your own WP site/domain) for less than $10/month. That’s cheap. Especially given the next three reasons…
Plugins
There are literally thousands of plugins out there to extend your WordPress website, including plugins for SEO, ecommerce, commenting, spam protection, social media, video, embedding, RSS, etc. Really, there are a ton. Simply go to Plugins > Add New within your WordPress installation and you can probably browse for hours.
Design
If you can dream up a design, you can adapt it. WordPress gives complete control over the style/layout of your site by editing custom themes. I have yet to see a platform that gives the end-user as much freedom as WordPress.
If you prefer to adapt your site from an existing WordPress theme (which is where Tweak My Theme can really help you), there are multitudes of free and premium themes available. Be warned: some of them will blow your mind. I still shake my head at the awesomeness of some themes I’ve seen.
Community
A TON of people use WordPress. Whether your looking for help, advice, or ideas, there are plenty of people who are using the same platform as you. Hence, the wide range of WordPress plugins, themes, and tips just waiting for you out there. The WordPress community is incredible.
