Why should you use WordPress for blogging?
WordPress is a platform that was originally built to be a blogging platform, but over-time as been developed into much more than a place for words and imagery. Professional looking sites can be created, including e-commerce ones. But, has the blogging side of this wonderful PHP-based platform been overlooked in-order to become the website creating a platform that it needs to be?
Personally, I still think that WordPress is a great place to create a blog. Many of users worldwide would also agree such as Rolling Stone, Bloomberg and PlayStation. According to the WordPress.org; 35% of the web uses WordPress. So, they must be doing something right, right?
Why you should still use WordPress for blogging
Ease-of-use is one main reason for choosing WordPress as your blogging platform. Creating a blog using WordPress.com can take 5-10 minutes, and it doesn’t require any technical knowledge. Simply sign-up and create your blog. Hosting is also free, but this does mean that your site will use a WordPress.com domain. To add extra professionalism and credibility it’s recommended that you purchase a ‘proper’ domain.
Not only is it easy to set up, but there are hundreds and thousands of themes to choose from. There are loads of freemium themes, or if you want something that has more features, then there are premium paid-for themes as well; these can vary in price.
The plugin store is home to thousands (50,000 approximately) of plugins too. A plugin is a piece of software that helps improve your site in whatever way it has been designed to do. There are SEO plugins that count words and checks your SEO compatibility on pages and posts. There are also plugins that help improve your site’s security and much, much more.
Cons
Of course, like anything amazing, there are disadvantages too. I guess the main for me would be that although it is easy-to-setup a WordPress blog, there are actually other sites that make it even easier. It might sound like I am being contradictive, but I’m not. Services/sites such as Blogger, for example, are blogging only platforms and require less setup and maintenance time. Since 2003, Blogger has been owned for Google, and thus creating an account (assuming you have an Android phone or GMAIL) takes seconds. Creating content takes a matter of seconds to get started.
Not only is it slightly quicker to get started, but the writing interface is probably more user-friendly. Recently, WordPress updated their writing interface to use the Gutenberg text editor. This change hasn’t gone down particularly well with the WordPress user community with many opting to continue using the classic editor. Not only that, but the plugin has a 2 out 5-star rating. Yikes!
Basically this new type of editor is used to quickly add different text types, such as headings and paragraphs, as well as blocks and embed codes. It has the front-end in-mind, however, it does look confusing to a beginner, and for those just wanting to write, it could perhaps be off-putting. Never the less, you can switch back the classic mode if you wish.
For me, I love using WordPress for blogging. It is easy-to-get started, easy-to-share content, easy-to-optimise for search engines and it is much more customisable than other platforms. Not only that, but there are tones of support online for creating a WordPress blog.
