Recently it was WordPress’ 7th Birthday. On the 27th of May in 2003, Matt Mullenweg released a fork of b2/cafelog, called WordPress. From the 0.72 release, it’s become the defacto blogging solution for thousands of publishers.
I love it, I think it’s great, and although I’m probably preaching to the converted, here’s 7 reasons why I think your blog should be on WordPress.
It’s Free
For what it does, and for amount it costs, it is amazing that it costs nothing. Sure there’s hosting costs & domain names, but there’s nothing stopping you playing with the software for nothing.
It’s Open Source
Fancy yourself as a bit of a coder? Well WordPress is entirely free to see the code. In fact, I recommend playing with WordPress to learn the basics of PHP. There is great documentation (again, open source wiki) to help you with the WordPress framework, itself a great introduction into advanced PHP programming & working with API’s & frameworks.
Furthermore, with it being open source, if a bug is discovered, it’s fixed relatively quickly.
It Is Quick & Easy To Use
WordPress is famous for it’s five minute installation, and when you get good, it should take you half of that time. Logging in you can write a post within a minute, and it’s ridiculously easy to use. Changing design & adding plugins is easy as well.
As CMS’s Goes, It’s Pretty Good for SEO
Out of the box, f0r search engine optimisation, it’s okay. However, with a few tweaks, WordPress becomes a solid SEO platform. It’s certainly one of the better CMS’ out there.
It’s Well Supported
I’m not sure if there’s been a “state of the wordpress community” post ever done, but WordPress itself hosts nearly 10,000 plugins, and there must be tens of thousands of themes available online (WordPress itself only holds about 1 and a half thousand). Each one has a programmer or designer behind it, and although support varies (the official wordpress forum is average at best), enough people know what they are doing, both paid or free, to help you out.
It Can Make You A Rich Man (or Woman)
Whilst I’m not a rich man, running this blog & a few websites on WordPress have allowed me to make some money, and anybody can do this. As well as ebooks, adsense, affiliate marketing & god knows what else, you can make a fortune carrying out WordPress related services for other people.
It’s Never Going To Disappear Overnight
WordPress has some huge sites supporting it, a company fully dedicated to it’s production, and a thriving community. It’s not here today, and gone tomorrow.
So happy birthday WordPress, here’s to the next 7 years!
photo credit: arrayexception
Tags: Blogging, wordpress | Comments: 4 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
Hi Rhys,
Definitely preaching to the converted!
Since I first used WordPress several years ago I have never looked back and it’s only very recently I dusted off my copy of Dreamweaver 2004 (!) to create some basic squeeze and sales pages!
Long may the WordPress success story continue!
David
I’ve only recently been using WordPress as up to now I have been using another CMS for my clients. I actually find that different sites work with different CMS’s. However, WordPress is definitely a brilliant platform to work with (so long as it’s done with thesis)!
Points 1 and 2 are the same point, but you need to mention the GPL. WordPress is Free because it’s GPL licensed. Note the capital F in Free. It’s not Free (as in beer), it’s Free as in you can do what you like with it. It’s a really important distinction.
These are my reasons (eight):
*Google loves WordPress – I love Google and I love WordPress and the two seem to be lifelong buddies.
*If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can probably use WordPress — Or maybe I should say, if you operate WordPress, you can probably operate Word?
*In taste tests, WordPress beats Blogger every day – I started out on Blogger and love that it helped me start crawling in blogging … but the keyword is “crawling.”
*Thousands of rockin’ free themes are out there to use
*And more are added each day — I threw mine into the mix!
It lowers the bar for what it takes to maintain websites — *Although WordPress is a blogging platform, it’s really so much more.
*No software needed – Have laptop and wireless connection? *Go blog in Starbucks if you want and blog about your cats.
One-click installs and the 5-minute installation — Can it get any faster?
Josefina Argüello – E-marketing