Blog better with WordPress
WordPress.org is the world's most popular website builder and blogging service. Versatile, highly customizable, and free to download, WordPress is an open source CMS that makes publishing and managing your content accessible and easy. Whether you're a seasoned author or a startup blogger, WordPress will make your site look good - all while ensuring that you maintain the rights to the content that you produce.
Maximum quality, minimum fuss
WordPress isn't so much a stepladder towards publishing your writing; it's more of a conveyor belt: The gap between speaking your mind and publishing is as small as it could be. Where other content management systems will require the end user to make all manner of minute adjustments to HTML or media, WordPress takes care of all that with drop-down menus, and a smart interface.
You probably won't spend much time using the manual HTML tab unless you run into the inevitable bug. WordPress offers easy solutions to functions like embedding tweets and videos, inserting images, and managing hyperlinks, but oftentimes what you see in the body isn't what you get. Once your piece is published you might be frustrated to find that links or thumbnails won't display correctly.
In these events the only solution is to go back and update your work through the HTML tab. It feels like switching from driving automatic to stick shift - an easy switch provided you know how to do it. In the ideal cirumstance an HTML background will not be necessary; WordPress takes care of all that for you. Novice writers lacking in HTML background may struggle if an issue arises.
Extensions, add-ons, plugins, and themes
Any audience interested in reading your blog deserves the best experience you can give them. There are thousands of templates and website designs on WordPress, and each offers different options to customize the experience the way that works best for your interests. WordPress has a litany add-ons, plugins, and professional applications to turn your blog into whatever you want, creating some truly unique website concepts.
While the default WordPress experience is free, there's also the option to pay for premium. First and foremost this removes the unprofessional-looking 'wordpress.com' from your site's URL. The premium WordPress themes included with a paid subscription are also professionally designed and optimally coded for higher quality. Premium themes are also hardwired to promote visibility, utilizing code designed for superior SEO.
WordPress compared to other blogging services
WordPress is in heavy competition with other blogging services and website builders such as SquareSpace,Wix, andWeebly. Aside from being the only free option, these alternative services and social networks are proprietary, closed systems. These social networks consider their writers a commodity, assuming ownership of whatever content gets published. Anything you publish on WordPress, on the other hand, is yours.
If you want to maintain full control over the future of your blog, WordPress is the best option. Aside from owning the rights to your blog, you'll also reserve the right to take it down whenever you like. This is because WordPress is a self-hosted solution. Users are never required to sign up with a hosting provider who would take a cut of your profit.
Upgrades, bugs, and hacks
The fact that WordPress is open source software is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it guarantees a continual upgrade cycle to reduce vulnerabilities and improve security. However, since the site stretches to allow for so many plugins and extensions, there are numerous possibilities for a random plugin update to break the whole site.
Since you are the owner of your own content, any plugin update or bug becomes your responsibility. It forces the original blog author through the frustration of either reverting the site back to its default state, or going through the lengthy process of testing every update in staging before applying it to the live site. Neither is ideal
Our take
The beauty of WordPress is its flexibility to create a product as simple as a personal blog or as complex as a new website. It yields a wide array of design options that allows for users to build the site they want to share with the world. If you are not worried about growing your business online, or are simply focusing on a small website, try another CMS.
What's new
Aside from regular stability improvements, WordPress has recently updated the color of the navigation bar for Android 8.1 or higher. They've also fixed page list ordering bugs to remain in alphabetical order and added support for Pexels images and image alignment options. There are still known issues with accessing media files in the app version of WordPress, but even if these persist users can circumvent the issue via mobile browser.
