learn wordpress now – how to blog!

Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

Wikipedia describes WordPress.com as:

‘WordPress.com is a WordPress-powered weblog hosting provider which opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005 and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It runs WordPress MU, a version of the original software that allows people to create and manage their own weblogs without requiring the time, money and technical knowledge involved in setting up WordPress on an ordinary hosting account. It is financially supported via the use of Google Adsense banners and paid upgrades.

The site was initially launched as an invitation-only service, although at one stage, accounts were also available to users of the Flock web browser^[1]. However, accounts can now be registered by anyone, and there are over 2,491,431 individual blogs with the service^[2]. Registration is not required to read or comment on weblogs hosted on the site, except if the blog owner wanted to do so; but registration is required to own or post in a weblog. All the basic and original features (current as of May 2006) of the site are free-to-use, and will remain so in future. However, some features (such as a CSS editor, domain mapping, and storage upgrades) are available only to users who pay for them^[3]‘

If you were coming to blogging fresh and inexperienced this definition would be as clear as mud. And this is the problem: WordPress blogging is so immersed in incomprehensible jargon that a newbie balks at the first hurdle.

So let’s do what the marketers tell us to do: point out the benefits, NOT the features.

What are the benefits? It’s quite simple.

• WordPress lets you create a free, robust, flexible web presence without the need to know any webpage coding language.
• WordPress is a WYSIWYG blogging system that lets you create web pages quickly, easily and as often as you like
• WordPress is respected as the premier blogging platform on the Internet.

That’s it. That’s what WordPress is.

Look, these days you don’t have to be a self-obsessed, egocentric loner to want to start a blog. Far from it.

In fact, anyone who wants a web presence needs a blog. Why?

Well, a well-designed blog is very often a better way of reaching your desired audience than a conventional website. A static website that looks very much the same from week to week does not encourage surfers to stick around or bookmark you for a return visit. It just sits there, metaphorically speaking, gathering dust.

Blogs, by contrast, are dynamic, interactive and alive. And the beauty of a blog is that, once it is set up, you can update it every day (or even several times a day) and you don’t need to be a techie to add more pages. You don’t have to wait (or pay) for a webmaster to upload stuff for you: if you can use a word processor you can maintain a blog. You just sit down, log into your blog’s admin area, type out your blog post and with one click it’s up there, live on the Internet!

Blogs can be used by individuals, businesses (big and small), voluntary groups, churches, families, clubs and societies, political parties, hobbyists, eBay sellers, schools, colleges, gamers, travelers, musicians, photographers, cooks, retirees, etc, etc – you name it.

Let me show you how you can build your own, good-looking blog, all by yourself, even if you are a complete newbie!