WordPress.org: Free CMS Blogging Software Review (Pros & Cons)

WordPress is probably the most popular blogging software used. It is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.

The latest release of WordPress is version 2.3.1, released on 26 October 2007. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

History

b2\cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog was the precursor to WordPress. b2\cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2000 blogs as of May 2003. It was also written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Though WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development.

WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.

In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package was changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress – causing a marked, and continuing, growth in WordPress’s popularity.

Features

  • Integrated link management
  • Search engine-friendly permalink structure
  • Extensible plugin support
  • Nested categories and multiple categories for articles
  • TrackBack and Pingback
  • Typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text
  • Static Pages
  • Multiple Authors
  • Can store a list of users that visit your blog
  • Can block a person’s IP address
  • Tag support

Pros

  1. You can select your own domain name. Just buy a domain name of your choice and renew it as long as you want to keep it your own.

  2. You can leverage a huge amount of plugins that will add functionality to your site. There are tons of plugins, being designed and supported whenever there are new release of WordPress. Most of the functionality you are searching for, it can be done with one of the plugin out there designed by other WordPress user, ranging from shopping cart, to high level affiliate integration.

  3. You can run advertising program, affiliate links etc and thus monetize your blog. If you want to make money from you blog, self-hosted WordPress is definitely your first choice.

  4. You have a myriad of blog themes to choose from, or customize your own theme, or even employ professional designer to make you a unique blog theme

  5. Easy to install and setup. Supposedly called a 5 minute installation, WordPress can either be installed with Fantastico (takes about 1-2 minutes) and the manual way (uploading via ftp, and creating a database), which is somewhat longer than 1-2 minutes, AFTER you have finished uploading the WordPress files. Please note that your hosting account needs to run mysql, Linux or Windows, and of course PHP, in order for WordPress to work.

  6. By being involved in your blog, with the back-end code of php, there is greater opportunity for learning
  7. Expand beyond just having a blog when you own & operate your own domain, you can add gallerys, forums and other avenues to your site
  8. Hosting your own blog can be more personalized in terms of choosing a domain name, that can even further enchance your SEO oppurtunities
  9. Total control over how your site looks, by way of being able to edit the CSS & PHP files

Cons

  1. Hosting and the domain name can cost you money (Hosting: normally up to $4-10/month for a new blog and Domain: $2-$8/year) .
  2. You’ll need some technical knowledge to install the software and its plugins.
  3. You are responsible for backing up your blog.
  4. You are responsible for upgrading whenever there are new version release.
  5. If you are using shared hosting package (most of you will start with this type of package because it is the cheapest) , your blog might be unavailable during spikes (Slashdot effect, Digg effect etc)
  6. Hosting issues – sometimes your blog will be down because of some technical issue or error at the hosting company.
  7. Users need some understanding of php and databases in order to get started and progress with their own blog
  8. You don’t get a highly skilled & dedicated team of people at the back of your blog, ensuring that it’s updated for you and includes fully functional working & valid back-end code
  9. You need to find quality web hosts so you don’t suffer downtime and eventually put off readers from visiting your blog
  10. Requires a learning curve which may be daunting enough for non technical folks. Rest assured, the developers are constantly trying to make WordPress more user friendly with every update. But still, it’s not uncommon for newbies to face a lot of frustration, but it does get better.

How to Install WordPress

List of Online Guide:

Guide from WordPress.org:

Download WordPress.

WordPress Installed for Free

Before you read much further, if you, for whatever reason, aren’t inclined to do this type of software installation on your web server/host, you can still use WordPress by requesting the WordPress Install4Free (http://install4free.wordpress.net) team do the installation for you for free!

How to Upgrade your WordPress software at server

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Or follow this official guide by WordPress.org

WordPress Plugins List

WordPress Themes List

Developers

WordPress development is led by Ryan Boren and Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg and Mike Little were co-founders of the project.

The contributing developers include:

  • Dougal Campbell

  • Mark Jaquith

  • Donncha O’Caoimh

  • Andy Skelton

  • Michel Valdrighi

  • Peter Westwood

Though developed much by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic, where some of WordPress’s main contributing developers are employees.

WordPress is also in part developed by its community, among which are the WP testers, a group of people that volunteer time and effort to testing each release. They have early access to nightly builds, Beta versions and Release Candidates. Upgrading to these versions, they can find and report errors to a special mailing list, or the project’s Trac tool.

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