When I first started on the Internet, websites were done by hand – and changes were a pain.

Enterprising programmer that I was, I tried a number of solutions to make changes easier – server site includes, a Windows template machine I wrote, even batch files in DOS to copy content.

Then in 2004 I tried a program called WordPress. I’d heard about blogs, dismissed it as ‘not for me’, but set it up anyways.

That site, BigBizBlog.com, is still running – and I was hooked.

From a writer’s point of view, a blogging tool like WordPress makes writing and publishing online easier – MUCH easier.

But WP is more than that – because it manages CONTENT, not writing – and content can be much more than verse or prose.

Content can be information about a company, or a sales page, or FAQ answers.

And a program like WordPress makes adding and changing the site ridiculously easy – much easier than a decade ago with custom solutions or editing by hand.

But WordPress adds a secret weapon or two that is very hard to do, even by hand.

For example, I could never get a simple search to work on my sites – code was complicated, expensive, and the search results had to be regenerated after each page addition. With WordPress, these same search results are a byproduct of the powerful mySQL engine under the hood – simple and easy to use, update, and manage.

Another feature is pinging – as pages are added, they announce themselves to remote services. These services in turn act like a announcement page for new blogs (and new articles on old blogs). And search engines pay special attention to them. So much so that sites can get traffic without a single link – as long as they remember to ping (and in the old days, remember, no links meant NO traffic)!

This just touches the surface – but I not only write about WordPress, I use it daily. And although there are other tools out there to manage sites, I find WP a powerful combination of usefulness, popularity, and power that makes it my favorite.

Make it yours, too.