Pingdom, a website and performance monitoring company, recently announced their 2013 study on the platforms used by the top 100 blogs and, not surprisingly, WordPress was up four points over 2012 to 52%. Companies like CNN, the New York Times and Mashable all count on WordPress for their blogging needs.
As I said, I’m not surprised. I’ve been using WordPress for years. There are three big reasons that I started using it and continue to love it.
First, getting started is pretty straightforward. When you sign up, you have access to dozens of themes, most are free, some have a one-time cost.
The difficult part is understanding how to use the tools included in your new theme and also to determine how and where you want it hosted. Jesse Friedman, a Professor at Johnson & Wales University and the Director of Web Development for Neal Advertising, has developed an independent study course called 28 Days to Your First WordPress Site. What I like most about it is that he helps with the technical details – server requirements and hosting, functionality and choosing the right settings.
While you can host your WordPress blog on their platform, your URL would begin www.wordpress.com. You can pay extra to redirect your blog to a personal URL that excludes the WordPress prefix.The second reason I love WordPress is because the dashboard is user-friendly, although it does require some tutoring. 
Once you get started, posts and pages are pretty uncomplicated.
Determining what should be a post and would should be a page is part of the process in setting up your communication tool. Again, Jesse walks you through this in his independent study.
My third, and perhaps the biggest reason to love the WordPress platform are the plugins and widgets. For a non-tech person like me, they are magic. Think about something you would like to add to your WordPress blog such as social sharing or SEO. There’s a plugin for that! Interested in including your Twitter feed or Facebook fans? You’ll find a widget that can do just that. Adding technology to your site is a simple click away. If you don’t like what you’ve chosen, just deactivate the plugin and delete it. You are in charge.
HOW’s MyDesignShop.com has a coupon for 25% off of 28 Days to Your First WordPress Site 25OFFWP28. I would highly recommend the investment. Learning from an expert is far more beneficial than trial and error, which is how I spent many hours when I began to use WordPress.
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