The Wordpress Internet

It’s always one of those bitter sweet moments when you consider some of the online success stories, such as FaceBook, Ebay, Amazon etc. on the one hand you’ve got to hand it to the talented folks behind them while your resenting the fact that they often came up with something so simple anyone could have done it.

But never the less there are some sites and systems out there that are just leading the way or defining how we interact with the net.

One of the more recent and most impressive (in my opinion) is WordPress the simple light weight blogging software that’s spread across the net.

It’s easy to use free to sign up mod-able and has become so ubiquitous that it’s one of  a suite of programs offered as automatic installs on most if not all Hosting companies.

So this one blogging software has actually secured its place as one of the defaults of the net.

This is pretty good going and is testament to the usability and most importantly the flexibility of this impressive software.

The real Key to Wordpress as far as I can tell is, it didn’t just consider its self as ‘blogging’ software. Blogging software has been done to death there’s loads of options out there and all of them are pretty much the same as each other, but with Wordpress you don’t just get the basic blog structure you get a stable, interactive platform that can be turned to almost any purpose.

Just take a look around (especially in the internet marketing sphere) and you’ll be surprised at how many of today’s sites are no more than Wordpress blogs re-tooled to the needs of the Webmaster, and these are often really good looking sites that normally would cost thousands to get made.

As a Webmaster I’ve been blown away with the creativity and flexibility available with WordPress, you really can do anything with it and depending on your skill level it will allow you to fashion some impressive sites in half the time it would normally take with programs like DreamWeaver or Publisher.

With Word press you can turn it to any function you want with just a few tweaks and plugins.

Infact there are loads of sites out there that recommend small suites of plugins that will turn your Wordpress install into anything from professional 'squeeze' page to a slick business homepage.

The link to the right of this module is to a pretty great guy who uses Wordpress and his know-how with it as a great hook to bring sales for his online course (I actually recommend joining the free part of his offer as the free video course shares some really cool plugins he uses) the other link incidentally is to his homepage which if you'll notice is a WordPress blog.

Well thats easy!

Wordpress is easy, free and constantly being improved by the addition of plugins and themes, it's universally available on pretty much all hostings and is often no more than a 1-click install.

On top of that it's a dream for SEO and getting traffic to your site since in it's most basic form a blog is an online diary which can be filled with relevant content and keywords while also providing an interesting and shareable source of info for your site/product or interest.

For beginners and professionals Wordpress is the perfect quick easy tool to get your message out there and start a foothold online. 

So far the plugins (or plugin areas) i've found most useful are SEO, Comment Spam and Social book marks.

So first up you really want to get hold of a user Captcha plugin for your comments, this will addd one of those little funny images where the text is all messed up to your comment section, and is one of the best ways to defeat comment spam (which is a big and annoying problem)

Second get hold of one of the many excellent SEO plugins, that do the time consuming job of setting up the right keywords and descriptions for every post for your, or at least layout the areas in an easy to use format.

Third up grab SexyBookmarks, yea i know it's not what it sounds like :P this is in fact a really great and regularly updated plugin that puts quick icons for your users to share your content, on Facebook, digg, stumbl upon, etc. it has loads of options and is really quick and easy to use, plus it looks really nice on the eye.

There are thousands of superb plugins available, and if you want to find a specific set for one type of blog or site, then just search google and your sure to find someones best suggestions for wordpress plugins :)