If you're new to the blogging arena, you've already undoubtedly heard about WordPress. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world, with its users ranging from casual hobbyists to incredibly large corporations. There are extensive WordPress web hosting options available and a multitude of information regarding the setup and customization of a WordPress site. WordPress is the easiest, fastest and most efficient way to get a blog up and running today.
The History of WordPress
The blog has existed almost as long as the Internet. When WordPress was first developed, there were numerous blogging platforms available, all of which provided largely the same benefits. Users had blogs that were hosted on a website and would log into the website to write their posts. Other users ran their own blogs on their own servers, but this could be a complicated process because they had to write their own code.
A Different Type of System
WordPress differentiated itself from the competition by offering up its source code. WordPress could be downloaded and hosted anywhere in the world rather than having to be tied to the WordPress.com domain. This allowed users with an incredible amount of freedom to modify their code as necessary. Other similar open source blogging platforms would follow, but by then WordPress would already have a firm foothold on the niche.
Customization Without Aggravation
WordPress was built on a very simple philosophy: to allow users to customize and modify their blogs with little to no technical knowledge. To facilitate this, WordPress included plugins, themes and widgets. All of these items worked together in harmony to create a unique blog that did exactly what the user wanted it to do without having to program their own code. At the same time, this excited developers who could now create these widgets and plugins for use by the general public.
The WordPress Industry
Today, WordPress has one of the most active and extraordinary development communities in the world. There are companies that depend on the sale and customization of WordPress themes and plugins for the majority of their revenue. WordPress has become an industry unto itself, and this type of momentum has made it incredibly successful. This has also had a bolstering effect on the popularity of the platform on its own, as companies and freelancers skilled in WordPress development now encourage use of the platform.
One-Touch Installation
The most compelling reason for the popularity of the WordPress platform is its ease of use and speed. WordPress is available as a one-touch installation on a majority of hosting services and a new WordPress blog can often be created in under five minutes. Users don't need to invest any time into the platform that they don't want to and this allows them to develop their new ideas very quickly. A writer, hobbyist or artist that suddenly has an exciting idea is far more likely to go after the solution that takes five minutes than the solution that takes ten hours.
WordPress is an incredibly easy to use and versatile blogging platform. While there are other content management systems available, none of them are as extensive as the WordPress application. Furthermore, the content management systems that are popular are not tailored towards blogging in particular. Drupal, Joomla and the other major names in the CMS industry are all based around content management rather than chronological and tagged blogging. WordPress is a one-of-a-kind platform that has been developed over the years into an accessible and robust blogging system.