Why I Chose WordPress to Manage My Content

There are a variety of content management systems available for use on websites. The ones most widely used today are: WordPress, Blogger, and Movable Type. If you did not already gather it from the title, this site uses WordPress.

Let me start by saying that this article is not intended to be a review or comparison of these pieces of software, but an account of the decisions I made when choosing which of them to use. Even if the end result looks the same, using what a person feels comfortable with is the only way for them to become a successful writer. You do not want to limit your creativity by using the wrong software.

One of the first qualities I looked for was extendability and extensibility, meaning that the software must allow me to modify and upgrade it as I see fit. I immediately removed Blogger from my list because it can only be used on Google's servers and is closed source. Even if you use the "advanced blog setup" feature, your blog is still reliant on Google to some extent.

Movable type used to be completely commercial, but had its license changed in 2004 in an attempt to please the open source community. It remained commercial however, so I also scratched that one off of my list.
Update: As of December 12, 2007, Movable Type is a (partially) open source application.

This leaves me with one choice left, WordPress. WordPress had all of the features I looked for when I was searching for a blogging platform. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is completely free. I have a bit of a bias towards WordPress because it is written in PHP, which makes it easy for me to modify it to suit my needs.

Plugins are a huge part of WordPress. The official WordPress plugin page is home to over 1,190 plugins with more being added each week. Three of my favorite plugins are:

• WP Super Cache - There is nothing worse than working hard to get a large burst of traffic, just to find that your site went down. The WordPress Cache plugin attempts to solve this problem by making the most frequently accessed pages on your blog static. Basically, it helps your site stay up under high loads by allowing it to serve requested pages faster, and to more people.
• Google Sitemaps Generator - Most of my visitors find this site from search engines like Google. (I'm sure you are familiar with them if you have your own site.) Some people find it difficult to get search engines to index what they have written. Aside from writing good content and having people link to it, you can submit what is known as a sitemap. A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like, a map of links that point to every part of your website. It can be tedious to copy hundreds of URLs to make an sitemap. This plugin takes care of the hard work by creating and submitting the sitemap for you based on the posts and pages that make up the site. With the help of GSG you will quickly show up in search engine results.
• WordPress.com Stats - I first experimented with WordPress using WordPress.com's free blog hosting service. When I migrated to my own hosting, I found myself longing for the ability to check who was reading my site straight from the admin panel. I was finally able to do that with the release of this plugin.

If none of these plugins suit your needs, there are plenty of others to choose from. You can even write your own if you know a bit of PHP. Read the WordPress Codex article on Writing a Plugin for more information. For those of you who are complete newbies to WordPress, Lisa Sabin-Wilson of justagirlintheworld.com has just completed her book titled, WordPress For Dummies. It is available for purchase at bookstores and online shops alike:

So, we've confirmed at long last, the official WordPress For Dummies book is reality and will be on the shelf at your local bookstore in no time! As well as Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, Books-A-Million and, of course, Dummies.Com and Wiley.Com.

If I don't win a free copy, I'll probably skim through it the next time I go to Barnes and Noble. A book written by someone who has been blogging for more than five years and currently manages a blog design company is bound to know a thing or two about WordPress. I suggest reading this book if you want to learn how to use WordPress effectively, or to improve your current knowledge and learn advanced features that will make your blogging experience more enjoyable.