February 21st, 2012
WordPress: The Blogging Engine We Know and Love
WordPress is pretty popular in the world of Denver website development these days. From humble beginnings as a free online blogging software, WordPress has expanded its capabilities and customization options for users. Chances are, you have heard of WordPress (psst…we are using it right now!). In fact, you may be utilizing it for your own business. Today, we want to give you an overview of the history of this multi-faceted tool, and an introduction to the possibilities it can offer you!
The Basics
WordPress had its first release in 2003. As it was in the beginning, WordPress is still open source and free of cost. However, this program is used more and more as a content management system: in fact, it is the most widely used content management system on the internet today.
Features
Selection of themes – WordPress users can choose from a multitude of templates, or edit their own combination of HTML and CSS to customize the look, feel, and function of their WordPress site. Virtually all facets of a WordPress site are customizable, which brings a big creativity factor to this website design tool!
Widgets - The word ‘widgets’ inspires smiles when said out loud, but is a great way to manage blog content online! Wordpress widgets allow users to help manage and organize content such as lists of blog archives, links, blog tag listings, and more.
Tagging - Aforementioned in our spiel on Widgets, tags are a great WordPress site feature. Tags allow users to make individual posts more accessible in WordPress and other search engines. Tags can help WordPress users connect with other users on relatable content.
RSS support - Although seemingly a given, WordPress fully supports RSS content into feed readers from any WordPress site!
Currently…
3.3 - The most up-to-date WordPress users are operating their site from WordPress 3.3. This version of WordPress was released several months ago, with a focus on making the program more usable for tablet operators. Following the trend of the rest of the web, apps for mobile devices are in place to allow more WordPress usability.
Social Media Widget - To help users connect multiple social media outlets, and to help users connect better with other users, WordPress has recently released a social media widget. Profiles from a long list of social networking sites can be embedded as part of a WordPress site. Handy, eh?
Shared Posts Widget - Another social media widget that helps users connect posts with Facebook likes, tweets via Twitter, and the like!
P.S.
WordPress is free, easy to get started with, and easy to use! With an array of pre-built templates, even those with minimal web knowledge can customize their site. A built in media library is also helpful for users without an ftp storage bin. Let’s not forget our key underlying consumer insight either…blogs are fun! People enjoy reading blogs about content of interest, and people often enjoy commenting on blogs; and hey, some people even enjoy writing them. Stay tuned for our next post in the WordPress series, we will talk about some ideas on the best way to utilize your WordPress site to cater to your online marketing needs.
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[...] Last week, we gave you an introductory spiel on WordPress. Although, let’s be honest, you have probably already heard of it! Today, we want to give you more insight into how WordPress can be optimized for your internet marketing needs. WordPress is a pretty versatile blogging engine, and there are a lot of ways that you can use it to your advantage! [...]
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