An Overview of Blogging with WordPress

Jan 31, 2012 by Ajeet Khurana

Webdesign today:
Webdesign has gone through many stages of evolution. Fortunately, the process has been made easier and easier as time went by. Popular Web applications and blogs such as WordPress are one of the many well known platforms that turned web content and publishing mainstream.

Getting started:
With WordPress, all it takes is a simple registration for a blog to go live. Free WordPress hosting can be offered as a subdomain if a domain registration is out of question. Upon registering, a graphical user interface such as a sidebar will grant the ability to customize everything from text size, background color, and much more. Some clicks and keystrokes can turn a bland looking wordpress page to a rich and dynamic web page.

Programming knowledge:
Knowledge of PHP can be very useful, WordPress can be dissected and customized from the ground up with some PHP. A graphical user interface can give you control over your site, but to really dive into it, PHP is essential. You have the choice of studying all by yourself, but you would also consider joining computer programming classes. Joining classes will help you gain from the professional expertise of a teacher.

Plugins are nifty add on’s to websites that can host a range of many features. An example of a plugin would be the integration of Facebook’s like button offering visitors the ability to like a page or piece of content. Another example of a plugin would be for Seach Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO plugins are made to optimize and configure the website to tailor to the search engine for better results. Any webmaster looking for web traffic would add on some SEO plugins for a higher page rank on search engines like Google.

Community:
Fortunately, there is a vast collection of plugins and add-on’s in the wordpress community, therefore a non programmer can use someone else’s code instead of programming. Many of the plug ins come with much documentation and support, so there is hope! Be sure to add some kind interactivity between visitors and the site, such as a comment box. The internet is full of spammers, so preventive measures such as comment approval can drastically cut down on unsolicited visitors.

Design Tips:
Users prefer a simple and organized layout, there is many websites on the web to be explored. The easier, and simpler the layout, the more likely a user will stay on the page with interest. In other words, when it comes to web design, less is more.

Conclusion:
Overall, starting a site with WordPress is relatively simple. Everyone is just a registration away from having their own personal and customizable website. Making websites is easier than ever with WordPress so anyone looking into webdesign should start to use WordPress as a stepping stone.