WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms available. Actually, that statement doesn’t quite do WordPress justice. How about this?
From Wikipedia.org:
WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet‘s “top 1 million” websites and as of August 2011 manages 22% of all new websites. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.
It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of December 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 65 million times
Now that’s growth. So, what makes WordPress so popular?
- It is free. (Go to WordPress.org to learn more.)
- It offers significant functionality right out of the box.
- It’s easy to manage yourself.
- There are online tutorials and communities where you can learn more about WordPress without having to figure it out on your own.
- It’s also easy to find service providers who are experienced with WordPress when you need additional customization or personalization of your blog.
- Another very compelling reason to use WordPress is that search engines like Google.com and Bing.com love WordPress and rapidly index posts and pages on a WordPress site.
- The wide availability of plug-ins can make WordPress do more than you or I could ever imagine.
As a result, WordPress is an extremely popular choice for small business owners and entrepreneurs and it’s my personal recommendation to anyone considering putting up their own website or blog.
WordPress coupled with plug-ins is a winning combination for bloggers. The two working together will increase the robustness of your site and allow it to do pretty much anything you can imagine short of brewing you a fresh cup of coffee.
There are literally thousands of plug-ins for almost any purpose you can think of – including playing audio, integrating your blog with your social media, tracking your statistics, backing up your site and more! Plug-ins allow the individual user to tailor their website to their specific needs without having to pay a programmer or purchase expensive add-ons.
To learn more, I recommend my special report, Essential Plugins for WordPress. It will provide more information on what a plug-in is, how to choose and install a good plug-in as well as introduce you to a variety of free plug-ins essential to your WordPress site function and management.
