A previous article presented Blogger. Blogger allowed the creation and management of a Blog site in an easy and painless way while providing the ability to customize your blog changing the theme and adding extra widgets. It is a very good yet simple solution to post articles that frees you from complex website management. What if you want more power to customize your blog? What if you want the ability to add plugins with enhanced functionality and also be able to host the platform yourself. The answer to those questions is Wordpress.
Ok, I am sold. How do I start.
All you need to start blogging with wordpress is create an account and select the option to create a blog as well. You need to provide a Blog name and that's it. You are ready. A novel feature of Wordpress is that you can either use wordpress.com as your host or download the platform and host it yourself. That way you can be in absolute control over your installation having though the added headache of managing everything, being responsible for backing up your blog, etc. To install Wordpress you will need to have PHP and mysql installed. Most web hosts provide out of the box PHP and mysql functionality so you will not have any problem hosting your Wordpress-based website. In fact many web hosts provide single-click installation of Wordpress so you will not even have to download it and then upload it to your host. If you are interested on installing wordpress on you computer read more on setting up your own Apache MySQL and PHP webserver.
A blogging platform with a twist
Wordpress is a blogging platform that has a somewhat different approach from Blogger. Even though they both allow easy posting of articles wordpress offers a more deep management system that allows you to completely customize your blog. It enables you to manage your posts using categories alongside with tags. That way you can organize your posts better. In addition it offers the ability to create separate pages and not just pages of posts. This allows you to give your Blog a more “website feeling” than a Blog feeling.
As is the case with Blogger you can use widgets to enhance the functionality of your website. Wordpress takes this one step further and allows you to install plugins written especially for Wordpress that provide extra features such as a custom login screen or contact forms. You can manage where and how these plugins will appear on your website.In addition it provides you with media library so you can upload images, mp3 files and more. As in Blogger you have a WYSIWYG editor to easily create, edit and post your articles and assign other users as authors. There are many ready made templates for your Blog and in addition you can edit the template yourself using the provided edtor to customize it.
As is the case with Blogger you can use your own domain for your Blog or you can purchase a domain from wordpress.com for 15 dollars a year. In addition wordpress provides you with migrate functionality so if you want to move your posts from another platform you can.
Ok, I am sold. How do I start.
All you need to start blogging with wordpress is create an account and select the option to create a blog as well. You need to provide a Blog name and that's it. You are ready. A novel feature of Wordpress is that you can either use wordpress.com as your host or download the platform and host it yourself. That way you can be in absolute control over your installation having though the added headache of managing everything, being responsible for backing up your blog, etc. To install Wordpress you will need to have PHP and mysql installed. Most web hosts provide out of the box PHP and mysql functionality so you will not have any problem hosting your Wordpress-based website. In fact many web hosts provide single-click installation of Wordpress so you will not even have to download it and then upload it to your host. If you are interested on installing wordpress on you computer read more on setting up your own Apache MySQL and PHP webserver.
A blogging platform with a twist
Wordpress is a blogging platform that has a somewhat different approach from Blogger. Even though they both allow easy posting of articles wordpress offers a more deep management system that allows you to completely customize your blog. It enables you to manage your posts using categories alongside with tags. That way you can organize your posts better. In addition it offers the ability to create separate pages and not just pages of posts. This allows you to give your Blog a more “website feeling” than a Blog feeling.
As is the case with Blogger you can use widgets to enhance the functionality of your website. Wordpress takes this one step further and allows you to install plugins written especially for Wordpress that provide extra features such as a custom login screen or contact forms. You can manage where and how these plugins will appear on your website.In addition it provides you with media library so you can upload images, mp3 files and more. As in Blogger you have a WYSIWYG editor to easily create, edit and post your articles and assign other users as authors. There are many ready made templates for your Blog and in addition you can edit the template yourself using the provided edtor to customize it.
As is the case with Blogger you can use your own domain for your Blog or you can purchase a domain from wordpress.com for 15 dollars a year. In addition wordpress provides you with migrate functionality so if you want to move your posts from another platform you can.
So, is Wordpress the right tool for you, or you should use Blogger? You can find out reading Blogger vs Wordpress.
