Before you begin, you ll need to have two things in place: web site hosting and a domain name. You can even host your Wordpress blog for free at http://wordpress.com/. Make sure that the hosting company you choose offer ftp access, PHP, and MySQL database support. I would head over to http://www.wordpress.org and read the article entitled Before You Install first http://codex.wordpress.org/Before You Install for a full listing of what you will need to get it up and running.
Wordpress has some key features that make it great for managing you website content. I am going to outline 10 of those for you.
1. Easy to Install
First, Wordpress is really easy to install. All you have to do is read the easy setup guide put together by the creators of Wordpress, titled The Famous 5 Minute Install . As long as your hosting supports the laid out in this guide, Wordpress can be installed very simply.
2. Easy to Set Up
Once you have Wordpress installed you can start blogging and creating pages for your site. You may also want to take some time and get to know the Administration Panel in Wordpress. There are a ton of options such as templates, plugins, etc that you can configure to fit your needs.
3. Easy to maintain
Now that you are up and running with Wordpress there is really nothing else required from you. It is great you can just run at this point. The only real maintenance is moderating comments if you choose to allow them and backing up your database on a regular basis. There is even a great plugin that you can use to do database backups, but I am getting ahead of myself I will cover plugins in a minute.
4. Easy to Add Content
As I said before there are two main ways to add content to your Wordpress website. You can add posts and pages . It is so easy to add content to both. They have a great text editor built into Wordpress. You can easily copy and paste or type your content. You can also add content by adding links which is also a built in feature of Wordpress.
5. Easy for Users to Navigate
Wordpress automatically adds links to all of your pages and posts. All you have to do is create the content Wordpress does the rest. This makes it so easy to add content you will find yourself with more free time to create content.
6. Easy to Customize
Wordpress can be customized in three main ways:
Plugins - There are a ton of pre-built plugins that can be found on the Wordpress website, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/. Most of these have been tested and are stable, but beware that sometimes you get unforeseen results. Always make sure and backup your files and database before you begin. Plugins can add all kinds of functionality to your blog. One of my favorite plugins is Scripturize. Scripturize adds links to http://www.biblegateway.com automatically.
Themes - Themes can be downloaded from the Wordpress website. http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. They have tons of themes and even information on how to make your own. Themes are a way for the Wordpress admin to totally change the look and feel of any Wordpress blog.
Do-it-Yourself - As far as customizing Wordpress the skies the limit. If you know just a little bit of PHP, HTML, and CSS you can do just about anything.
7. Easy to find information and help
It is so easy to find help and support for Wordpress. I would start over at http://codex.wordpress.org/Main Page. They have the official Wordpress support and help. Help is also only a Google search away. You would be surprised how much information is out there.
8. Easy to maintain a connection with your users RSS
Wordpress has some great way to get your users involved and help you reach out and connect with them. I really like the RSS feeds that Wordpress supplies for you. This is such an easy way for your users to get your content and keep up with what is going on. You can also create a Podcast feed using Wordpress. It is also great that all of your posts can have comments. This is a great way to start some dialogue with your users.
9. Easy to Expand
If your website and blog are small Wordpress is great way to get started. As it starts to grow, Wordpress easily grows with you. You are only limited to the amount of room that you have for your database and other Wordpress files with your hosting company.
10. Easy to promote
You can easily promote your website and blog using the built in tools in Wordpress. They have a feature that every time you add content it pings all of the popular blog aggregators and adds your content. I know that I started getting traffic on my Wordpress blog the very first day because of these easy-to-use options.
In closing, if you are looking for a way to start a new website or redesign an old one Wordpress may be the best way for you to do it. It only took me a few days to get CWAHD.com up and running on Wordpress and I am sure that you can do it, too. If you don t have any current content to move to Wordpress you could literally be up in minutes. Wordpress is molding the future of website design and you will be ahead of the game if you learn to use it now.
About the Author Allen Hart is the founder of CWAHD.com, Christian Work at Home Dads. CWAHD.com was designed to assist dads in their quest for a work at home job or business. For more information and additional articles, visit http://www.cwahd.com or contact Allen at info@cwahd.com.
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