According to WordPress.org, “WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.” And to me, this is sooo true!  The developers also say “More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.” Aye, (had to get some of my medieval verbiage in here!), although this is much more powerful than just a blogging software.

The main difference between WordPress and other blogging softward is that you can make static pages that will always be on the horizontal bar or sidebar for easy reference. For instance, you can have a catalog of all your books on one page, which is nice for people to refer to–and you can update that page to keep it current. You can also have a bio or about me page, which tells of your background, which won’t change that much. It will be there mainly for newbies, those who are just learning about you.

I always like to have a page set up for people to contact me privately, whether I have my author hat on, or my web designer hat on, (well, I especially need a contact page for the latter!).

But the main reason I have now resorted to WordPress is because of the ease of using the admin panel, or what WordPress calls the dashboard.  Think of driving a car; everything you need to operate the vehicle is on the dashboard, which is where I think the developers of WordPress came up with the term.  It takes a little getting used to, but they have improved it so much over the years.

And I like WordPress because they have a dashboard widget that queries Google Blog Search so that when another blog links to your site it will show up here. And hey, if you link to my site, I’ll link to yours!

WordPress is evolving all the time, and I plan to keep updating Marteze tutorials for my clients.