WordPress: Qualities That Make the Best Blogging Platform
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So, What makes the best blogging platform? Well, here’s my criteria:
It should be easy to set up and customize, even for the computer novice.
It should be best buddies with the search engines.
And it should be friendly to bloggers on a tight budget.
WordPress not only fills these criteria, but also goes way above and beyond.
Easy -breezy
If computer terms like html and css scare you, don’t fret… the WordPress blogging platform has evolved into a user-friendly do-it-yourself click and drag. You don’t have to know code, or much code lingo, to set up WordPress. If you have an Internet connection, do a search for WordPress setup tutorials and you’ll have a sweet buffet of how-to knowledge at your fingertips to get started. But just so you’re not blindsided, be on the lookout for some tools you’ll be directed to right off the bat, many of which can be downloaded free or purchased cheap:
- The latest version of WordPress (free at http://wordpress.org/download/),
- A domain name for your blog ($10/yr at GoDaddy.com),
- A hosted web server ($10/mo at Hostgator.com),
- A theme (100’s of free theme downloads at http://wordpressthemesbase.com/),
- And a FTP (file transfer protocol) client to upload your theme design to the host server and make your beautiful new blog visible to the world (free download from FileZilla).
Once uploaded, you can start customizing your blog immediately by installing plug-ins. Plug-ins give extra functionality to your blog, allowing it to become your own living breathing Frankenstein monster. (See my essential plug-ins list at the bottom). These plug-ins are easily accessible within your back office dashboard, and being an open source project, an unfathomable amount of developers around the world are constantly improving them and inventing more to fill the ever evolving needs and wants of bloggers.
Look At Me!
The best blogging platforms should make most SEO a non-issue. WordPress solves a majority of SEO mechanics. The platform itself allows each page to be indexed by searched engines and has a built in auto-ping feature telling all the search engines that you’ve made a new post. And as touched on before, you can install a vast number of SEO plug-ins (Check out my plug-in picks below) that automate the grunt work for you with the click of a button, giving your blog the best possible chance of getting seen. And you’ll be happy to know that both the platform and plug-ins are continuously being improved and updated which not only helps keep your blog user friendly, but secure as well. Believe it or not, security plays a big role.
Adam’s Must-Have Plug-ins
- Akismet by Matt Mullenweg – for spam control
- All In One Seo Pack by Uberdose – for just what it says
- Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold – to build a site map
- WP- Data Base Management – for backup
- WordPress Stats – for tracking
- Google Analytics for WordPress by Joost de Valk – for more tracking
- Secure and Accessible PHP Contact form by Mike Cherim &
Mike Jolly – making yourself accessible - Onlywire for WordPress – for one-click bookmarking… essential in my marketing strategy
Adam likes these, too
- Dragon Design Sitemap Generator
- MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
- TweetMeMe Retweet Button
- wp-cache
- WP-DBManager
- Sociable by Joost de Valk
- Subscribe to Comments by Mark Jaquith
- Dragon Design Sitemap
- Top Commentators Widget by Lorna Timbah
- What Would Seth Godin Do by Richard K Miller
- Internal Link Building by SEO ROI Services
- WP Auto Tagger by iDope
- Disqus WordPress Commenting System
This Is My Land
But here’s why I believe WordPress is the best blogging platform. You can literally have your own hosted blog, set up, optimized, and running for the price of your hosting service, domain name, and a few hours of your time. The downloads are free. The updates are free. The plug-ins are free. You can stake a claim to your own prime online real estate, and using the examples I gave above, you can own it for under $12/month. I’d say that’s a pretty valuable deal.
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