Why WordPress? Why Not WordPress?

I have been online now for a little more than a couple of years (by that I mean have my own domain and my own website), but never gotten around to seriously writing stuff or posting on the internet on a regular basis. I did have my usual share of articles and reviews put up on my website, but nothing reaching the regularity or the volumes I am turning out at the present. One of the reasons (though not the only reason) was that I had a website and not a blogging platform like WordPress. I used the excellent software XSitePro to create, maintain and edit my website on a regular basis, but really the content or the volume on the website never changed much for a better part of a year. XSitePro though an excellent piece of software was not optimized for blogging like WordPress is and also did not offer the range of diversity that is on display for WordPress with its myriad of themes, plugins and whatnots that’s on offer from the WordPress faithful and that too for free. XSitePro on the other hand costs close to $197 today and does not come anywhere near WordPress in offering so many features or options. One of the biggest differences between them both is CMS or Content Management System which means all the website building, editing, maintaining work is done on the server itself and not on a system at your end. This means there is no more hassle of uploading files via FTP whenever any change in the website is made and in fact all changes take place in real time and on the fly, and are reflected immediately since we will be accessing the website on the server at all times and making changes or adding new content to it on the server. Of course you can write or blog in a word document or other blogging tools and paste the content on the CMS through the browser, but the option of blogging in real time on the browser is an option only available in CMS.

Very obviously one downside to this is that all the content is maintained on the server database and if the server decides to ever go away permanently it does so with your entire content especially heartbreaking if you do not have any backups. However, not to worry for in the case of WordPress there are many plugins available which will take a backup of your database, some even automatically every ‘n’ number of days, and then even email these backups to your specified email ID.

I for one have become a fan of WordPress for its myriad of features and its ease of use. WordPress in fact even claims a Famous 5-Minute Installation, yes that’s all the time it takes to install WordPress before you are up and running on your own website. What’s more since WordPress offers so many plugins, themes and whatnots, you are all the time fiddling with different options in an effort to make WordPress better and more optimized for your purposes. All of this means you can change the way WordPress looks, behaves and acts by just changing a theme, activating or deactivating a plugin and playing with other options and all of this in real time and on the fly. Gone are the days of coding in html for days on end and then putting it all up on a website before seeing for yourself the end product. With WordPress it happens immediately and you can keep the changes or discard them at that very instant. This also keeps the interest rate in blogging up and makes for more focused and enthusiastic bloggers.

I for one like change and that too on a regular basis. Even when it comes to my looks I like to keep changing them on a frequent basis. You might be wondering what does he mean by “changing his looks”, well you are thinking right, there is nothing much one can do with what one is born with, God given or even more closer to home parents given, but within that I do change and experiment like growing my hair long, or cutting it real short, growing a beard, growing only a moustache, or even sporting a stubble as long as it qualifies to be called stubble. The same way I like to change the look and the feel of my website on a regular basis and I did do this frequently with my previous website software, but nothing comes close to the ease with which it’s possible in WordPress. You really need to work with WordPress be it even for a day and try it out for yourself since no amount of words from my side will do justice to how ridiculously easy WordPress is when compared to coding monsters like Dreamweaver and the like. Of course its better put that we leave Dreamweaver and its like to professional software programmers, but really for amateur bloggers and for those who are on the internet as a hobby or a passion CMS like WordPress is a blessing that cannot be measured in words. Go ahead and give WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) a shot, you will never regret it.