by Biloxi Von Lutz

Created on: June 28, 2010

Wordpress is an extremely versatile and easy to use publishing platform most commonly used for blogging and content management. It can be used as a platform for a site that you host or you can have your blog hosted on the wordpress.com site. Wordpress is designed to be a turn-key installation for beginners and gives you the ability to design an exciting site with little to no knowledge of HTML required. It has an easy to use interface called the dashboard and many plugins, widgets, and themes available to customize your site.

The dashboard is where you spend most of your time within Wordpress. From here, blogposts are written and edited, and settings are adjusted for the majority of the site. You can design new pages for your blog that display information to be shown all the time, such as "about me" or "contact information." When you write blog posts, a separate interface within the dashboard opens up where you can type your post, insert media, edit HTML if desired, and format it to your liking. The dashboard also allows you to edit links to other sites and organize and display them however you wish.

Wordpress also gives you the ability to use plugins and widgets. Widgets are simply small boxes that go in the margins of your site where you can add plain text, calendars, links, popular posts, ads, even Javascript and HTML. The options are virtually limitless. Plugins are essentially tools that change the function of your website. These may be as simple as adding social bookmarking links or as complicated as adding video and music capabilities to your blog. There are even plugins that allow you to place ads in between paragraphs. Both plugins and widgets can be added and disabled within the Wordpress dashboard.

Themes ultimately determine the overall appearance of your blog. There are hundreds of free themes that you can peruse to give your blog the desired look. Themes are more than just aesthetics, however. You can choose from themes that have customizable headers and footers, as well as themes with multiple columns. Whatever style blog you desire, there's a good chance that someone has designed a theme for it.

Wordpress has grown to such an extent that you can essentially run an entire website with it. There are marketplace plugins and even themes and plugins to make your site a social network. All these options are easy to use for even the beginner Wordpress user.

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