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What is WordPress and why use WordPress for blogging?
WordPress is a content management system, otherwise known as a CMS. Basically a CMS is a scaffolding or a skeleton for websites.
For example, when you visit a website you will notice that they typically have a title and header of the website identifying it. Below are typically categories that the website is organized into.
Then you will find a variety of columns whether they are single, double or even triple columns.
In those columns you will usually have the body in the center of the page to the right or left columns, you will possibly find a list of recent blog posts along with a search bar to find particular content that you may be interested in from that blog.
Most blogs, especially WordPress, are organized into posts or pages.
Posts and pages for all intents and purposes, function pretty much the same. Posts are more like articles and are the most common form of content on a blog.
Whereas pages are more permanent bodies of content. For example, you may have a Resource page, an About page, a Privacy page etc. and posts are basically articles.
In this “post”, I’m going to go over why you should use WordPress for your blogging.
In fact, I will go over 36 reasons, in fact, on why you should use WordPress for your blogging platform.
WordPress software is free and open-source.
WordPress software, the CMS, is free. WordPress is also open-source.
This means that no one owns the software.
Therefore, anyone can use it, build upon it and improve it.
There’s no proprietary uses that can limit the WordPress website owner. Unlike other closed-source platforms like Wix, Weebly, Shopify etc. all of which are closed-source and proprietary software platforms and CMSs.
To download WordPress for free, including its themes and plugins, you can either go directly to WordPress.org or if you have a hosting plan with any number of web hosting providers, they usually have WordPress, which is downloadable from their platforms in your web hosting account
WordPress can be free for blogging.
Many first-time bloggers think that in order to blog for free you would need to either set up a blogger account, which is fine, or go on a site like Medium and blog there for free.
Although both are good platforms, they don’t compare with the adaptability and flexibility of WordPress. You can start a free WordPress blog on WordPress.com today.
WordPress is adaptable and scalable.
With WordPress you can start your blog as a simple blog, even a personal blog.
However, WordPress has the tools and is so adaptable that you can scale it to a fully fledged website.
You can add, for example, an ecommerce store, a forum and other features.
In fact, you can turn your simple WordPress blog about your hobby or personal interests into a full-fledged business.
WordPress can handle different types of Media content.
Although most blogs consist mainly of content in text form, nothing makes content in the written word shine more than images and other media like video, even interactive whiteboards etc.
With WordPress you can add all of these features and more.
You can embed videos directly from YouTube or even host videos yourself on your blog through your web hosting provider.
WordPress is easy to run and manage.
Once you download WordPress onto your web hosting provider’s servers, all you need to do is log in and you will have access to the clearly laid out dashboard.
There you will find everything you need to do and all the things you need to use in order to run your WordPress blog.
You can use all of the features or none of them.
If all you want to do is blog for example, you can simply create a post in the editor and start writing. It’s as simple as that.
However, if you want to get or customize a theme, add more functions through the downloading of plugins, you can do that too.
WordPress is safe and secure.
WordPress is constantly updated to the latest version of its software in order to stay one step ahead on those looking to exploit its software.
WordPress also has many security plugins and software that you can add to it to make your WordPress blog safe and secure.
Many of these are free and most usually have paid versions as well for added protections.
WordPress is easy to learn and great for beginners.
My first website was of course a WordPress website. I had and still have very little to no knowledge of coding. Although I have since learned some HTML and CSS, that’s the extent of my coding experience.
However, when I first created my first blog I had no coding experience at all.
Nor did I need any when I downloaded WordPress onto my first web hosting account more than 10 years ago.
WordPress has since become even easier for absolute beginners to set up a great looking WordPress blog for them to share their thoughts and opinions to the world.
There are plenty of online tutorials, both free and paid in addition to countless YouTube videos that can answer most questions and can help you solve most tasks with step by step instructions.
WordPress has a large and helpful community.
There are numerous forums and communities all over the internet which do nothing but talk about WordPress and help fellow WordPress users manage their WordPress blogs.
If you have a question on WordPress for example, or something you want to add etc. to your WordPress blog, you can simply access one of countless WordPress forums for ideas and solutions.
You can start off with the community on WordPress.org. But Reddit, Quora as well as other popular online forums have great WordPress sections.
This doesn’t even include the amount of YouTube videos that you can watch for tips and tricks on how to use WordPress.
Also many developers of plugins and themes have their own forums on how best to use their tools and are an invaluable source of learning and training for WordPress bloggers.
WordPress is good for not only blogging.
WordPress is not only good for blogging, but you could expand it.
In fact, you can create a whole livelihood around your WordPress blog. You can expand it into a forum, add an ecommerce store or give membership only access.
You can even make money by putting display ads or affiliate products on your WordPress blog and turning it from a simple personal blog into a full-fledged business.
There are countless examples of people doing just that with their WordPress blogs.
WordPress is the most popular CMS on the internet.
WordPress by most estimations power about 40% of all websites on the internet today. In fact, WordPress is the most popular CMS on the internet today.
This is despite new entrants coming into the market all the time. WordPress continues to grow, evolve and remains steps ahead of their CMS competitors.
WordPress is ready to use right out of the box.
Whether you download WordPress directly from WordPress.org or from your web hosting provider, it comes ready straight out of the box.
Usually WordPress will come automatically with a free theme already set up.
However, more than likely you will want to change that theme.
But no need to worry about that.
There are thousands of WordPress themes and well over 50,000 WordPress plugins to add functionality to any theme you choose for your WordPress blog.
You can literally have a WordPress blog up and live on the internet in no time.
WordPress is mobile friendly.
Since the majority of internet users now access the internet through their mobile devices, WordPress has also evolved and streamlined their themes and plugins to be optimized and very mobile friendly.
WordPress Blogs are customizable.
WordPress blogs are highly customizable. You can change your theme, customize it by adding colors and fonts as well as add functionality through the use of plugins.
There are many things that you can do to customize a WordPress blog without the use of a developer.
This is one of the major benefits of using WordPress as a non-developer or coder.
You can basically build a website by simply customizing a theme and using plugins. All on your own with no need to write a single line of code.
WordPress is easy to customize with Themes and Plugins.
With WordPress you can easily create a great looking blog. How? With thousands of free themes and well over 50,000 plug-ins.
You can not only get your blog looking the way you want it to, but functioning the way you want it too through the use of plugins as well.
All without writing a single line of code.
Furthermore, If you find that free themes don’t have what you’re looking for, you can always opt for a paid theme.
In fact, you may find that a free theme may do almost everything and look almost the way you want it, but not exactly. Thankfully, most free themes have paid versions as well.
With a paid version of your free theme, you can then get it looking exactly the way you want it, again without writing any code. That’s the beauty of WordPress.
That’s what I did when I started out with GeneratePress and I’m glad I did. The extra $60 was well worth it and I’ve been renewing that theme every year since.
WordPress Blogs include Social Media integration tools.
You and your users can easily share the content on your WordPress blog to social media through the use of integrations and plugins.
WordPress Blogs can expand into an ecommerce store.
If you would like to expand your WordPress blog and sell products on it, whether they are your own products or other products that fit your WordPress blog’s theme, you can just add an ecommerce store to it.
In fact, WordPress has WooCommerce which is an ecommerce platform especially made for WordPress websites.
With a WordPress Blog you are not limited to one hosting provider.
Unlike closed and proprietary CMS’s where you are limited to using their hosting, with WordPress you can choose your web hosting provider.
For example, if you use Wix or even blog through Shopify, you are basically stuck with their hosting.
You can’t simply take your Wix website for example and choose another web host. This is crucial because no web host is perfect.
With WordPress you can move and change Web Hosts anytime you like.
You may want to do this if your blog blows up and becomes super popular and you get a lot of traffic for example.
Perhaps you don’t like the customer service on your current hosting provider and you’d like to change. You can do that too, with WordPress.
WordPress blogs can be made partially or full private.
If you want to make your WordPress blog Private and only accessible to family, friends or even colleagues, you could do that with WordPress.
Perhaps you don’t want to make your entire blog private, only certain pages or posts.
You can also do that with WordPress through your dashboard and set up User Roles or through a plugin.
WordPress blogs can include membership options.
Do you have valuable content, but you only want to share it with true followers?
You could do that with WordPress as well by adding a “Membership Only” feature to your blog or your entire WordPress website.
There are quite a few excellent membership plugins for WordPress you can use both free and paid.
WordPress blogs can expand into Forums.
Do you want to go beyond having a membership only site or blog?
Perhaps you want to have a community of forum members who can discuss a variety of topics related to your blog.
This may be easier to do by adding a Forum to your WordPress blog instead of simply commenting or replying to comments from your readers.
You could do that and more with WordPress as well.
You can schedule posts with a WordPress blog.
Unlike other platforms like Medium, you can schedule your WordPress blog posts so that your readers can always have a consistent flow of content.
Perhaps you plan on taking a vacation and want to schedule some blog posts ahead of time.
You could schedule posts as far as you like on WordPress.
WordPress has Multi-user capabilities.
Do you have others who want to contribute to your blog?
Perhaps you have a few contributors that live in different time zones.
Well, you could simply add them as “Users” to your WordPress blog and they can post whenever they like without you having to supervise everything.
If you do this in WordPress by adding different User “roles” with varying degrees of access, either through your WordPress dashboard or through the use of plugins.
You can add testimonials to your WordPress blog.
Are you using your WordPress blog for your work?
You can have some of your satisfied customers leave you testimonials to support the quality of your work.
WordPress has not only plugins that will enable you to format great-looking testimonials.
But within the Gutenberg editor you can actually have a testimonial type quotation block to display them. Of course, you also have page builders and plugins that can also highlight your testimonials on your blog for the whole world to see.
You can publish blog content immediately on your WordPress.
Unlike other CMS and blogging type platforms like Medium. You don’t have to wait for approval from editors, you can simply write your blog post and publish it immediately so it is out in the world without any delays.
No coding required to set up and run a WordPress blog, not even HTML.
You don’t need to know a single line of code in order to set up, publish and run a WordPress blog.
Everything can be done within the WordPress dashboard, editor or through the use of plugins. No coding required. Not even HTML.
WordPress continues improving and evolving.
One of the reasons why WordPress is so popular is because it is constantly evolving.
While other CMSs look to imitate WordPress, WordPress stays far ahead of the competition and is constantly updating its software as well as its features.
WordPress developers also are consistently updating and improving their themes and plugins as well.
WordPress has free software updates automatically.
Speaking of constantly evolving and improving, WordPress also has frequent software updates that you could set up automatically within your dashboard.
Updates are useful since they keep the software fresh and fill in any potential vulnerabilities.
All of these updates are free to all WordPress users.
WordPress blogs offer simplified content creation.
With WordPress you can create blog posts either through their Gutenberg block editor or through their simpler Classic TinyMCE editor.
But with Gutenberg you have all kinds of possibilities to make a blog post as pretty as possible without the need to buy a page builder.
Although there are some excellent page builders out there that actually go far beyond what Gutenberg can do, there’s still quite a bit you can do with Gutenberg.
Personally, I’ve gone back to the Classic TinyMCE editor since it’s simple and easy to use. But you do have options.
WordPress blogs can be optimized for speed.
WordPress has all kinds of features and plugins to optimize your blog for fast page loading speeds.
This is important, since no reader wants to wait minutes for a post to download in order to consume all that valuable content you’ve written.
WordPress blogs offer affordable and flexible pricing options.
Even though you can get a WordPress blog up live on the internet for free on WordPress.com, if you want more freedom and flexibility, there are also a variety of hosting plans offered by countless web hosting providers that you can choose from.
WordPress blogs can be multilingual.
Do you want to reach non English speaking audiences in many countries all over the world? Well you can do so with a simple multilingual plugin.
Translate your WordPress blog content into a variety of different languages for our readers all over the world. With multilingual capabilities your visitors can access and read the content that you produce in their own native tongue.
You own not only your blog but also its content.
If you decide to publish a blog on a site like Medium for example, they own your content, not you.
They can also profit off of your hard work by putting display ads all over that nicely written content you’ve created without you getting compensated for it.
With WordPress on any self-hosted plan, you receive all the revenue from whatever ads or affiliate products you decide to include with your content.
You have full control over your WordPress Blog.
If you have a blog on a closed platform like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Webflow or semi-closed like Ghost, you cannot take your website and migrate it to another host.
You are not only stuck with their CMS, but you are also stuck with their hosting and customer service as well.
With WordPress you have full control not only over your theme and your plugins, but you can migrate it to any web hosting provider you like. That’s control.
WordPress is the best platform for independent blogging.
Overall WordPress is the best platform for independent blogging. Why? Simply put, I’ve given 36 reasons why in this blog post alone.
But if I were to summarize all these reasons into one, it would be freedom.
With WordPress you not only own your blog, domain name, theme, plus all the customizations you’ve made to that theme.
You also can have it hosted anywhere you like.
In addition, you also control any monetization possibilities and can publish anytime you like and own the content you publish. That’s freedom and control.
WordPress is still the future of blogging.
Blocking isn’t going anywhere. I know that video and Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube and other video platforms are trending heavily right now.
However, people still like to get their information in written form. When the phonograph, the radio, the television and other forms of media were introduced to society, people didn’t abandon books, newspapers or the written word in general.
Since blogging and the written word is just another form of communication there will always be a place for it.
WordPress has been at the forefront for bloggers, blogging and the written word on the internet since it was introduced in 2003.
In fact, as I’ve mentioned above, it is so popular that it powers 40% of all websites on the internet today.
In other words, WordPress isn’t going anywhere and it’s got a bright future. You won’t have to worry about WordPress closing down any time soon.
WordPress is good for SEO.
WordPress is great for SEO. WordPress includes site maps as well as SEO plugins etc. that can help you create great content that not only Google can find, but that real people are looking for.
You can basically set up your WordPress blog, add a site map, some SEO plugins and just write great content and be found by those looking for it.
Between sitemaps and SEO plugins, those two combinations alone will not only help you get found by Google, but will help guide you in writing great content that people are looking for.
Why use WordPress for blogging, final thoughts.
So I’ve given you 36 reasons why you should use WordPress for blogging. But I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, it all boils down to two reasons why you should use WordPress for blogging.
Those two reasons are freedom and control. WordPress is open source which means that no one owns the software.
Whatever themes and websites you create with those themes and plugins are yours along with your content.
You could take that content and your whole entire website including your theme and plugins and have it hosted practically anywhere you like. That’s control. And that’s WordPress past, present and the future of blogging.
