WordPress is the biggest and best blogging platform because:
- WordPress is easy to use so new bloggers and non-techies can start playing round with it and updating their blogs straight away;
- WordPress is powerful enough to host blogs for mega sites like CNN, Reuters and Ebay.
For small business owners and writers that means that if you need to upgrade or expand your blog or website in the future you can do that easily with WordPress. In fact, you can do anything in WordPress, from setting up an online store with secure sales (see one my company set up here) to hosting a private membership only area or forum (here is one my company set up).
7 Reasons I Love WordPress (and You Will Too!)
1. Easy to use – You can set up a free blog at WordPress.com like this and get it live immediately. You won’t have your own domain name (like www.successfulblogging.com) or a professional blog design but you will be able to write new posts, edit them and publish them. If you like WordPress then you’ll get best results if you hire a professional for your blog design leaving you free to do the fun bits – writing blog posts and finding blog readers.
2. WordPress has the widest range of plug-ins – These are add ons which upgrade your blog for more functionality and ease of use. Examples include plug-ins to allow you to add Twitter or Facebook share buttons to your blog or to create a blogging editorial calendar. Many plug-ins are only available for WordPress.
3. Robust – WordPress can do whatever you want it to do so you’ll never need to change blogging platform again.
4. Great for websites too – Even if you only want a static website WordPress is still an excellent content management system which will allow you to update every page of your website yourself.
5. Totally flexible – You can do anything you want online with WordPress.
6. WordPress is free - Yes, you read that right.
7. Huge choice of themes – A blog theme is the template used to create the way your blog looks and feels. There are thousands of themes to choose from, many free and other premium themes which you pay a little for.
Thesis Theme for WordPress
Both my blogs are run using WordPress and the Thesis theme.
3 Reasons I Love Thesis
1. Superior search engine optimization – Unlike many other free WordPress themes, Thesis is optimized for search engine optimization so if you want to rank well with the search engines Thesis will give you a head-start and make search engine optimization easier.
2. Reliable – Thesis uses bulletproof code that’s been refined to perfection over the last few years for maximum performance and durability.
3. Design - Thesis is a theme framework that will allow you to create a unique look and feel for your blog.
That just scratches the surface of why I love and recommend Thesis and WordPress but you get the idea.
This year I’ve helped several business owners (including Seana, David and Kimberley) make the switch from Blogger (on Blogspot) to WordPress because they couldn’t get the results they wanted with Blogger.
Like many bloggers I started my blogging journey with Blogger too but outgrew it quickly.
If you need a hand switching from Blogger to WordPress I can help you but if you haven’t started blogging yet use WordPress.
And if search engine optimization is important to you choose the Thesis theme.
That’s all!
What’s your take on blogging with WordPress and Thesis?
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
You said: “Thesis is a theme framework that will allow you to create a unique look and feel for your blog.”
I know this. I have Thesis, but I haven’t been able to get away from the generic look of my site. I guess I don’t know how to be creative with it in terms of design and using the hooks to get it. I’d love to find a Thesis for Dummies that offers visuals, pictures of design layouts that can be created with the codes to go with them. I’d love to learn to do it myself, but can’t find the right info with the visuals to use for inspiration
Hi Miss F,
You’re a step ahead of me there. My hubby does all the techie stuff! The options for you are either love what you can do yourself with Thesis and be happy that your blog is optimized for the search engines or invest in professional design so you can get it looking just the way you want it.
For people who blog for business the investment in professional design is worth it and will pay them back many times over:)
Karen, check out my new design on Thesis and Wordpress.
I can’t take credit for it, but it does illustrate how versatile Thesis can be.
Your blog looks great. I know how great some of these Thesis layouts can be, but have no idea how to create something similar myself
I’d like a book with sample designs and the codes and variation to go with them so I know where to start and adapt them.
Anybody know a book like that??
i heart wordpress. another thing to consider is that being the most popular, is that should you decide to outsource some of the work (whether it be the blog design or updating of the content) then you will find more people are knowledgeable on this platform.
a great thing about the themes is that even though wordpress is the most popular (and best) platform which almost everybody uses, there are endless ways to make them all look different.
i think as important as wordpress and an seo’ed theme are, you have to throw “good hosting” into the mix. im reaching the memory limit of my current host (crashing), and i cant change the memory allocation without having to pay A LOT money
or go to another host (most likely).
so get it right the first time!
dEx
Hi Dex,
Ah, that’s lovely. Good point, and Wordpress developers are smart cookies too:) Yes, I love that with Wordpress every blog can be unique.
Our ideas and writing are unique. Our blogs should reflect that:)
Sorry to hear about your hosting problems. We also host blogs we’ve designed with 99% up time guaranteed and support to hand.
Getting it right first time helps! I’m sure many will learn from our mistakes:)
Hi Annabel, how are you? I have been meaning to respond all week to this blog via Facebook but that will have to wait until I get a free evening. I have to agree with you and thank you for your kind work in converting the Paradise Rescued blog over to Wordpress. Apart from anything else, the ease of working with it and uploading images, which we love for our wine brand, has saved a stack of time every week. We have a fair amount of back work still to do but the results and of course the integration / branding with our web site are extremely positive. So thank you to you and Rich the Mucho man (www.mucho.com.au) for your expert help!
But PS – what the heck is Thesis (other than a long winded PhD submission), where was I sitting in the class for that lesson. I don’t think it’s in your book, either?
Best wishes, David on #Cloud9
Oh, just one more tought!! I was reading one of your blogs on the plane yesterday, regarding SEO for my blog. Could have been written in polish for the amount I could understand – LOL! It might be a great topic for a blog sometime to tell us how to use the endless number of filelds and arrays in Wordpress to get the best SEO results? I kinda reckon Wordpress is so rich in features that i will ever only use about 5% of its power! Shame perhaps, although not sure what I am missing yet!
D
Hi David,
So glad you’re happy with our work and thanks for the great feedback.
Every blog has a “theme” as a framework for the design. I recommend Thesis. Your blog has a different theme with limitations like the slightly too wide column width so hopefully we’ll get to upgrade it again sometime!
Thesis makes SEO much easier so anyone can plug the key words into the relevant boxes.
It’s all quite complicated but don’t worry, you don’t need to learn everything all at once!
I am in the process of switching BACK to WP from blogger now. In early 2010 it was harder to navigate and there was so much ‘code’ I was turned off. I switched to blogger and now I’m going back.
Keep your fingers crossed I don’t lose any of my archives!
b
Hi Barbara,
What a pain! Fingers crossed it all goes as smoothly as possible:)
Be careful changing from Blogger to Wordpress. I had it done professionally, but lost 2/3 of my subscribers and was heartbroken. We even contacted Feedburner and they said there was nothing to be done because it was a Blogger issue they had no interest in fixing.
This was 1 1/2 year ago, so it may no longer be a problem.
Sometimes you have to just say something is fabulous!!! And this is one of those posts!!! I am so glad that when I started blogging more than a few people said: start with wordpress and you will never look back. So true!!! I love the features and how easy it is to implement new features and plugins!!! I have never been tempted to look at another platform, because I am so happy where I am!!! I am so grateful to Wordpress – anything that makes blogging easier for me so that I can just post away as and when I need to.
Hi Se7en,
Brilliant:) Wish I’d started with Wordpress from day one too but you live and learn!
I’m with you, Annabel. Thesis and Wordpress are the way to go. But what a lot a people don’t realize is that Thesis is a technical framework, not a theme per se.
I see a big difference between the two — a theme being out-of-the-box pretty, but not customizable to your exact specifications. Thesis has a long learning curve for us non-techies, but the results are worth it, since it’s so powerful behind the scenes.
Hi Debra,
Thank you, that’s a good point, it is much harder to set Thesis up, that’s why I recommend you get a professional to take the headache out of it! Your site looks great and totally different from my Thesis blogs:)
Interesting Annabel. I love WordPress as well, however I never had the opportunity to work with thesis, I am into StudioPress Theme Development. I guess someone needs to get me a thesis them and ask me to learn and develop a top notch theme, until then I guess I wont be changing frameworks.
Hopefully Pearson will have a better framework API on the next Thesis release. I’m hoping for a beta soon, I’m on the list.
Short answer for generalized Thesis mods: dig through lib/framework.php and assemble the necessary calls in your own template file. Enqueue a template-specific stylesheet. Ensure the template is named or routed appropriately so WP can load it. It’s not terribly difficult with a little PHP. Disclaimer: I sell a very expensive, boutique product for templating Thesis child themes.
Do you use wordpress.com or wordpress.org?
I quite liked Pivot in the early days, around 2003. It was probably on a par with WordPress then in terms of user community.
As you say, WordPress is easy to use, easy to customise and has lots of add-ons.