It’s time to post something in the Technology category…
I was thinking about blogging for quite sometime, and I considered the alternatives. Basically it breaks down into two approaches:
1) Blogging services that provide a ready to use blogging site (Blogger, Xanga, Livejournal, etc.)
2) Blogging software that you run on your own server (Wordpress, B2, Moveable Type, etc.)
The advantage of the first category is that it is very easy to get started and you don’t need web hosting. The second solution offers more powerful software with more flexibility, plus you are in control of your own data.
For a simple introduction to some of the most popular choices read here. For a detailed evaluation of various blogging software solutions see this.
Since I was already getting my own web site, I opted for choice #2, and specifically I decided to go with Wordpress.
A few more thoughts about why I specifically chose Wordpress…
- It is very powerful but easy to use. If you stick with existing templates and plugins it is easy to customize without any programming knowledge
- If you want to go beyond the basics you can create your own templates and go way beyond anything possible with Xanga.
- You can use plugins to extend or modify the operation of Wordpress, and there are a lot of built in tags and hooks that make it easy. Wordpress is designed to be extended by users.
- I like the ability to assign posts to categories, so that readers who are interested a specific type of post (e.g. Technology) can click on the Technology category link and see all those posts. (Those reading the crosspost in my Xanga will need to come to my main site to see what I am talking about.
- Wordpress is a blogging system, but it is more than that. I call it “Blogging on Steroids.” With the ability to define static pages that are not time-dated blog entries, it can function as a CMS (Content Management System). You can create pages and subpages to set up a whole hierarchy of documents. Since I want to write some more serious articles as well this was important to me.
- Wordpress is free
- Wordpress has a great support community. There is great help available and people are always creating new templates and plugins.
I could add more to this list, but I think that you get the idea. If people are interested I could tell you a little more about some of the plugins that I use and what they do.
Posted by Ken in Wordpress
