Friday, December 31, 2010
Guest Post by Ashvini
Many of us search for a good blogging platform to showcase our ideas and experiences. Blogging has transformed itself from expression of our personal experience to now include providing information,
brand building and online collaboration and sharing. Blogging inspite of skepticism has become one of the primary activities happening on the internet. A good blog entices thousands of users to share experiences, get into productive discussions and generally network with each other.That brings us to the question that if we decide to blog today, what blog platform should we use. My opinion is that any blog and its management software should have following features so that it makes blogging a lively experience.
- Blogging using the software should be easy.
- The software should have a huge user community.
- The blogging software should have a lot of plugins to automatize mundane tasks.
- It should be easy to modify and should support large number of themes.
The list above is not exhaustive but it is what I would be looking for in a blogging platform. When I started blogging, I came across blogging platform known as 'Wordpress'. As I learned more about it, I found that it is indeed one the best blogging platform available on the internet. Below are the reasons for the same :
It is all open source
That means you can have all the source code, modify as you want it and make the site suit your individuality or corporate image. It is written in PHP which is the defacto standard for web development making 'Wordpress' one of the most acceptable platform fro blogging.
It has millions of existing installation
According to wordpress site, "There are 16 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com as of December 2010.". That is a number that speaks volumes about the quality of wordpress software and in my opinion is a good reason to give it a try.
It has got a large user community
What makes Wordpress a great software is a great user community which helps resolve problems, create plugins for free and to improve the software continuously. That means you can get great quality plugins and support for free and authors ask only for donatios and appreciation. Isn't that just great?
It is easy to use and modify
You can create your own look and feel blog or choose from thousands of free themes available online. If you donot like the free themes, you can purchase template of your choice from many sites that are selling them at affordable prices. You can then customize to make them Search engine friendly, put in gadgets ( called as widgets here) and give your users a great web experience.
You can manage your content very easily
Wordpress has all the features of a great content management system. If you want to delay publishing a post you can set it to draft status. You can customize your links as they appear to viewers. You can also add users for
guest blogging with varying permissions. Content can be neatly organized using hierarchies of categories and can be indexed by tagging it with appropriate tags. You can also chose to add media such as video, audio files or pictures to your blog post easily.
It is free
A wordpress blog comes free of cost and hence you dont have to spend a dime to get the world class software. Isn't that a great reason to use it?
Till this point, I am learning new things everyday about this great blogging platform and I have never been disappointed. Infact I enjoy creating my own blog themes whenever I am bored of the old ones. So try it out and have fun blogging.
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Ashvini Kumar Saxena is an entrepreneur and an avid blogger. His website
http://aks-blog.com is a resource rich site for wanna be entrepreneurs.
December 31, 2010 9:07 PM
Ahsvini, this is a very useful and informative post. More so because I still feel that people are in dilemma over choosing a right blogging platform. The same happened with me too. And instead of Wordpress, I decided to go for Google Blogger. Still I don't think it to be a bad decision but yes, if I had used Wordpress, results could have been far better. To be honest, I like Google Blogger coz its easy and user friendly. No time for regrets now. Maybe in future...I will think about Wordpress migration. Lets see.
Anyways, thanks so much for this favor. Really appreciated. Have a great year ahead :)
January 1, 2011 12:47 AM
Well written well said nothing much more to add i move to wordpress almost a year ago now i am been powered by wordpress and thesis what more could i ask for wordpress is simple the best but choosing a blogging platform should be a personal choice.
January 1, 2011 12:56 AM
happy new year
January 1, 2011 9:59 AM
Well said.Wordpress is the best blogging platform and since i started my new blog in Wordpress i am enjoying it :)
January 1, 2011 11:46 AM
Hey Guys,
@lawmacs : Yes Wordpress is "one" of the best and it is indeed a personal choice to get your own blogging platform. Thanks for your comment.
@shabnam: thank you. I will visit your blog to check it out.
@all and Aswani: Have a great happy new year. Thanks for commenting on my post.
Best regards,
Ashvini
January 1, 2011 9:52 PM
A point in favor for blogger is that it’s easy to create a blog by using the customisable templates, but wordpress allows you to customise your site with an assortment of plugins. Also, there’s always a risk involved with Blogger if they decide to shut your blog down.
January 2, 2011 4:49 PM
Ya indeed WP is the best blogging platform but when it comes to security Blogger is the best...i feel... :)nyways a very good post.
Thanks for sharing :)
March 27, 2011 11:46 PM
Yeah really true, I guess my blogger blog is banned due to some reason coz its traffic instantly went to zero from 200 page view per day so i m just moving to wordpress hope this will help me. visit me at : http://internetwithme.wordpress.com
Regards
Shrey tiwari