If you’re just starting out in the blogging world, look no further than WordPress. Just think of WordPress as the tricycle of the blogging world. Almost everyone starts out on it when they’re just learning how to put one foot in front of the other and get their blog where they want it to be. Of course, for this to truly be accurate, some of the fastest and most successful professional cyclists in the world would have to be competing on tricycles. WordPress is the best for beginners, but it’s no slouch for professionals either. There are three main advantages to it when you’re starting out. First, it has an intuitive design. Second, there are plenty of resources out there for it. Lastly, when you want to go beyond basics, there’s an app for that.
Intuitive Design
WordPress is set up to look very much like your basic word processor. If you’re used to typing anything up on the computer at all, you’re probably halfway familiar with everything that WordPress has on the blog editing page. You can find the familiar buttons (and even some of the same keyboard commands as Microsoft Word) in the same places, ready to help you format your work.
WordPress also offers really approachable interfaces for the web-specific things that you have to do. From the “Add Media” button that lets you insert videos and pictures to the simple “Tags” box that allows you to add tags to your posts for easy navigation, WordPress is built elegantly. Spend a little time poking around and you’ll learn enough to get started.
Many Free Guides and Resources
WordPress is great for beginner bloggers. It’s partially great because there are so many resources out there to help beginner bloggers learn to use WordPress. From there, it’s a spiral. It’s popular and in high demand, so more people make resources and guides to help you figure out how to do what you want with it. This spiral results in plenty of free help to do just about anything you want to do with it. This is the perfect environment for someone just starting out.
Lots of Plugins
Once you get beyond the basics, you’re going to reach the limit of what you can personally do with WordPress. That’s no cause for alarm, however, because many other people can do a lot more. They write these programs and create plugins. They’re code that you literally “plug in” to your WordPress site. Plugins can do all kinds of things for you. They can help you optimize your content, find free legal photos for you to use, analyze your page views, and more. Some plugins are free and some cost money. Beginner bloggers can just find the right plugin and get to work.
WordPress is an amazing platform. Its popularity has resulted in tons of guides and plugins that only feed its popularity more. Combine that with an intuitive design and you get a great platform for beginner bloggers.