Thought I'd try to point out some of the benefits of setting up a blog with WordPress.

1. It's free: If you're looking for an inexpensive way to get a site online then you can't beat free. I can't speak for all blogs, but with WordPress you can set up static pages so you don't have to just blog. You can really create a full site with it and there are many, many themes you can use if you don't care for the default look.

2. Extremely easy install: It really does take only about 5 minutes like they claim. You need to upload the files and set up a database through your host. Then go to the url for the blog and you're pretty much done.

3. SEO: Wordpress has been coded to be seo friendly. A lot friendlier than most sites in general that I see online. You can easily set it up so the urls make use of your keyword rich title instead of all the dynamic parameters.

4. More SEO: Just having a blog is good for getting found in search engines. More pages = good. Writing focused posts kind of optimizes itself. Case in point. On my own blog without doing anything special many of my posts are found daily in Google. Other than trying to write a good title and keep the page focused on one thing I didn't do any other seo. The pages don't get found a lot, but when you add up the pages it does bring a decent amount of traffic and as I write more pages the search visitors will just keep coming.

5. Even more SEO: The more you write on the same topic over and over and assuming you're writing quality posts, the more other sites will naturally begin to link to you and further increasing your search engine presence. It also set you and your site up as an authority both with search engines and with potential customers and clients and anyone else you want to impress.

6. It's easy: You don't need to know any html or css or any other language to set up, manage, or add new pages or posts to your blog. It's basically a rather simple content management system that works very well.

7. It's really easy: Even if you don't know any html, css, or php you can find many plugins to add to it's functionality. Trust me if you can imagine something to add to WordPress someone else had probably alredy beat you too it and coded it for you. And installing new plugins (and themes by the way) is even easier than installing it in the first place. It's usually upload one file and then click a button to turn it on.

8. Yep really easy: Need it to be even easier? There's a codex for it that's one of the most inclusive help files I've ever seen. Tells you how to do just about anything you might want to do with WordPress. it also has a search feature that will lead you to WordPress forums for even more answers. Oh and one of the plugins allows you to search directly from the admin interface so you don't even need to go to the codex.

9. It's just plain fun: Even if you're not looking to impove your search engine position or win friends and influence neighbors it's still pretty cool to know you have a voice online and people you'll never meet are being influenced by what you have to say. There's even a wow feature with version 2.0. They use AJAX to delete posts. Not really necessary, but is faster than having to reload the page and it's just cool.

Ok there's 9. Who's got more?

2b. especially if you're on a host with Fantastico

10. Themes, themes, and more themes. So many themes.

I installed my WordPress blog through Fantastico which did make it really easy. I later installed one without Fantistico and it wasn't really any harder. It
maybe took about 3 minutes total to have it all up and running. But yep it was easier with Fantastico.

And you're right there's a ton of pretty nice looking themes.

Excellant post. Very informative and accurate.

I started another thread as to not hijack yours.

Exellent post and all good reasons to use WordPress, I can't even think of any to add. I personally love all of the theme options that can be used along WP for easy installation and munipulation without costing a small fortune

The reason I use blogger is that I can blog from my pda. Can this be done with wordpress.

I can't say as I've never tried from a pda, but I know you can post just by emailing to your WordPress blog so I assume you could. I've never used email to publish so I'm not entirely sure how it's done, but I know it can be.

At the moment I've been using an extension for Firefox called Performancing to post.

As long as your pda can browse online you can always just log into WordPress and publish directly too. Can't imagine there's an issue with using a pda, but like I said I've never tried so I'm not entirely sure.

widgets are awesome. Add items to your sidebar(s) with a drag-and-drop interface. 2nd link.

I have used WordPress Blogs. They were easy to install, and had a truckload of nice themes, so I agree with you all on that. I think it makes a great first blog platform for anyone wanting to learn the ins and outs. I played with mine quite a bit and added and edited and deleted all over the place. This particular platform is quite noob friendly and I would highly recommend it for beginners and even for the experienced.

Hey, dougadam, why don't you post that in a thread I created titled Why Do People Like Blogger ?. I'm actually looking for people to express themselves about blogger. I'm actually doing a research and I'm going to post it in my blog. Please help me out.

And, why isn't anyone voting in the polls ? Please use the poll because it is a really nice form of stat. I've posted this on other forums and am amazing to see more response. So, please help me out. Please use the poll.

About Wordpress :-), I love the way the way it accepts AJAX and any kind of adjustment. My theme has a little Javascript but no probs for wordpress. When I was in Typepad and Blogger, it had really made me scratch my head.

Wordpress is also good in the high extent of customisability. There's plugin probably for each and every service. It is also easy for PHP coders to customize as the docs are pretty good. The lead developer Matt Mullenweg has commented that he will be doing some "spring cleaning" with the code since there are so many complaints that the "the whole code is becoming unmanagable".

The community is really good. Alex King and some of the former b2 developers are some of the best PHP coders known. So, its more safe and stable than any other. And, after all, its open source. Something which open source must be proud of. Its really nice to hear that the Matt is just 19-20 yrs old. Fellow teenager u know.

WordPress is awesome. Easily my favourite piece of open-source software right now. For any functionality that it lacks, there's likely a plug-in that gives that functionality. WordPress is everything that's right about blogging and open-source software.

Hi all,

Two more reasons would be:

1) Extensibility via the huge plugin library
2) Anti-spam tools: Akisment, Bad Behavior, Spam Karma 2

Rich