Best Blog Software – WordPress Review

June 3, 2006

I suppose I’m a bit biased… If you look at this blog, you may have noticed that I use WordPress. I think you can still trust me though, because

1. Not everyone loves their blog platform – Quite often I find people eyeing other blogs covetously, wishing they had the knowledge or time to move their blog to new software but don’t.
2. No conflict of Interest – WordPress is free, so it is not like I am earning any commission by saying so.

That brings me to the first point of why I believe WordPress is the best overall choice for a Business (or Personal) Blogger.

Importability (Is that a word?) to WordPress

If you are considering blogging to converse with your customers, WordPress allows us to import our blog from most of the major competitors (Blogger, Livejournal, TextPattern, RSS Feeds, DotClear (Oui!), and MoveableType. This is an enormously helpful feature. Otherwise most of us would have to copy each post manually into the new package. For anyone dilligent about posting this is a major barrier to change even if they are extremely dissatisfied with the status quo.

Vast Choice of Templates

There are tons of free WordPress templates available on the web, since everyone has access to the software. There are also some templates available at cost. If you really want to step it up, you can hire a custom template from a quality designer who has experience in blog templates. Professional design will run you a few grand but it is well worth it in the long run. And no… this isn’t a professional design ; ). I haven’t followed my own advice (get too caught up in the content sometimes) If you saw how I look when I leave the house sometimes, you would understand completely.

Constant Updates

I’ll go into more about why I love open-source later, but WordPress’ source code (the program itself) is open to be changed by anyone. This means that we have thousands of the best programmers around the world tweaking the software on their own dime to make it better for everyone. These modifications to security and functionality are released periodically via updates. Just a few months ago they released the big “2.0” update which was a pretty radical change to WordPress. More recently, WordPress released 2.03 the other day which adds minor changes to the functionality. For those of you using Cpanel or some other automatic installer, these updates should be configured by your provider. This makes updates as simple as a click of the mouse.

Oh… and there’s more

I could go on about why I like WordPress for days, and I just might. Tune back in for more of the WordPress Review.