Google Love: A Look at WordPress

A Look at WordPress

Ask marketers which platform is best, and the majority of time you’ll hear “WordPress”.

WordPress is an open source blogging platform and content management system that is offered at no cost.  The platform is based on MySQL and PHP and has various features, which include a template system and plug-in architecture.

WordPress is easy to use and has unlimited customization opportunities that are nearly endless.  WordPress does much more than function as a blog.  Marketers are also using it as a website.

WordPress as a Website

WordPress offers marketers and developers built in Pages feature, which allows the creation of standalone pages for websites over and above your blog posts.  The customize themes, as mentioned earlier in the article mean endless design possibilities.  With WordPress content management feature creating pages, managing assets, embedding video and more are nearly effortless.

Let’s take a look at a few WordPress features:

Themes

WordPress offers a number of templates that are both free and paid which allows users to install and change themes.  The content on the site or structure of the site is not altered when changing a theme.

Plugins

WordPress features over 22K plugins that vary in purpose.  One of the most popular is the architecture plugin which offers developers the ability to design and update sites.  Other plugins include adding widgets and search engine optimization.

Widgets

Widgets are small modules allow users to implement plugins’ extended abilities and drag and drop content placement.  Developers can add functionality to sites, such as a small new slider, a Facebook Like box, or a slideshow.

Multi-user and Multi-blogging

WordPress offers marketers and users the ability to create multiple blogs to exist within one installation.  Users also have the option to create a blogging community of their own and to control and moderate each blog from one single dashboard.

Mobiles

Native applications exist or Android, WebOS, iOS, BllackBerry, and Windows Phone.  The applications are designed by Automattic and offer options such as the addition of new blog posts and pages, commenting, and so on.

Other Features to Note

Other WordPress features include a search engine-friendly clean permalink structure, link management, tagging of articles and posts, and assign articles and posts multiple categories.  Standardized formatting and styling of text is also provided through automatic filters.  WordPress support the Pingback and Trackback to display links to other sites that have also linked to an article or post.