WordPress by far is the most popular software used for blogging. Almost every self-hosted website that was build for blogging uses WordPress. It sheer versatility, ease of use, numerous themes and plugins available make it the choice script to install. In addition, if you decided to turn your WordPress blog into a Content Management Style (CMS) type website with hierarchical structure, no problem, it could be done too.
Setting one up is quite easy. The WordPress site has a handy guide to help you in your installation process. Of course if you have Fantastico DeLuxe or Simple Script in your web hosting company like BlueHost web hosting company to do the installation automatically without having to go through the process of setting up a MySQL database, downloading the installation script, extracting it, modifying the appropriate PHP code to match the MySQL database and running the installation script on your own. Of course if you like the challenge, you could do the installation on your own!
Using WordPress is very simple, far simpler than using the other CMS software like Joomla or Drupal. Basically they have two types of content creation, a post or a page. Post are the content which you publish regularly such as blogs or journal while page are permanent web page which you could use for your “about me”, “contact-me”, “FAQ” pages for example. The Post can be categorised and tag to provide some form of structure to the linear chronological based style of blogging. With some planning in advance you could of course make your WordPress website into a full blown CMS style website using a combination of Page, Post and making the links of the side bar navigation to point to your tier 2, tier 3, and etc pages to create a website hierarchy layout structure.
As for themes, there are so many available and given away for free that you would be spoilt for choice. You could easily spend a lot of time going through the many beautifully design website template and wondering which beautiful template to use for your website!
Not to mention, the addition of plugins are just as numerous that could increase the functionality of the WordPress software. One of the absolutely must have is the Akismet plugin to check against comment spammers. This can save you a lot of time screening through the comments that you wish to be shown on your website. Other useful plugins include the All-in-one SEO pack and Google XML sitemaps to increase your website visibility in the search engines.
One of the interesting features of WordPress is the sidebar widgets. This is to help people who do not feel comfortable messing around with the PHP codes to customize the sidebar. With the Widgets, you could easily enable or disable function that you want shown on your sidebar. However to use Widget, you need to find WordPress Templates that support this feature as not all templates incorporate the Widget function. For those who like to tinker with the PHP code, note that enabling the Widget will lock down your ability to edit the PHP from WordPress’ Theme Editor. You will have to edit the theme from the provided editor by your Web Hosting company file manager. If the file manager did not come with an editor, you will have to upload your own modified files after you have edited the PHP files.
Though this was a simple review, if you were thinking of running a blog on a self-hosted website, there is no need to consider any other type of blogging software as WordPress is the best choice to use for making your own website.
Find out more about at WordPress.org
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