Mozak Design Blog

7 Reasons to Choose WordPress for Your Website

If you’re ready to create your business website, “how” you build it – what software platform you choose – is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make.

As of Sept. 2009, 202 million websites worldwide used WordPress, making it the most popular blog software in use today. WordPress is a great tool for small business owners. It is versatile, free, and easy to use.

Here are 7 reasons why I recommend it:

1. WordPress is versatile. It meets the needs of start-up businesses and seasoned pros. If you just want a blog, WordPress delivers. If you want an easy-to-use professional website, choose WordPress for its type-and-publish simplicity. And if you want both a business website and a blog, there is simply no better program available today.
2. WordPress is free. You don’t have to purchase the software. The basic themes (and there are plenty to choose from) are free. Most plug-ins (software tools that help the site operate more efficiently) are free. Online resources, including blogs and forums, are also free: This means it costs you nothing to become proficient with WordPress.
3. WordPress is easy to customize. Begin with a basic theme, and you can change the colors, layout, theme elements, and more. You can also create a completely unique theme, one that is as individual as you are. This part isn’t free – but by leveraging an existing theme it is affordable.
4. WordPress is all about “WYSIWG” – what you see is what you get. That means updating your content (something you have to do often) is easy. You type, test the page, and go live. This is also called CMS – content management system – and no one makes it easier to manage your words than WordPress.
5. WordPress is a global solution. That means it is designed to work on every browser, in almost every country, in almost every language. There’s peace of mind in knowing that your business website can do its job – selling you – everyplace it goes.
6. WordPress works with Social Media. This means Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the other social media tools, all work seamlessly on your WordPress business website.

WordPress grows with you. As your business evolves, so will your website. WordPress makes it easy to update everything from your theme, logo, color scheme, to page layout. It’s a snap to add or delete pages. When you’re ready to add a blog, offer a free ebook, or build a mailing list, you don’t have to change software programs.

Plugins In Review: Login LockDown

When you have a Wordpress blog, one of the problems has always been hackers. While I have never had the displeasure of having my website hacked, I do know those who have. Of course, the default username ‘admin’ does not help with this. Through trial and error, hackers can get into your dashboard and have their way with whatever they want. The Login Lockdown plug in is an effort to stop anyone from entering your Wordpress website without permission.

The plugin itself is pretty straightforward. You install it pretty much like any other Wordpress plug in by uploading the file to the plug in directory of your website. Activate the plug in after installation and you are protected. However, there is a little bit of customizing you can do. Through the options panel you can set the number of failed attempts and the length of time the person is locked out of your blog. This is a good thing just in case you forget your password.

One of the great things about this Wordpress plugin is that it also captures the IP addresses of those failed log in attempts. This way you can see who is trying to access your blog!

Plugins In Review: Redirection

Picture this, a potential client is searching on Google and finds a link to your site. They click on it and … yikes … a 404 page not found error! How embarassing …

One of the more useful Wordpress Plugins that I have been using on my Wordpress Website is something called Redirection. This handy little plugin helps to keep my site navigation clean and useful. Being highly configurable, Redirection provides many different options to help you keep your website navigation in check.

There are two specific cases when I turn to this plugin.

• First, in the event of a page url change or removal.
• Second, if I want to add an external website as a link in my navigation bar.

In the case of the first application, Redirection prevents visitor loss due to “page not found” errors (404s).  Instead, this plug in will redirect visitors to a specific page you select when the invalid URL is requested.

Additionally, Redirection tracks all “page not found” errors that occur on your site. This is important as it tells you exactly which URLs bring people to your site resulted in a 404.

The second application where I find Redirection comes in handy is the addition of and external site to my navigation. This comes in handy if something like a “calendar”, “event registration” or “homepage” exist on another site. To add these items to my navigation I simply create a page with the name I want to show up in my navigation. I then use Redirection to send visitors to the external URL I want when they click on the page name I created. It really is that easy.

Redirection is one of those gems of a Wordpress plugin that helps you gain more control over where your traffic goes because of errors. Installation is quite easy, and works with Wordpress 2.6 and higher.

Check out my video below to see how to install and use the plugin Redirection. (coming soon)

Where to Host your Wordpress Blog

So you have decided to begin blogging with Wordpress … but now what to do. For most of us the next natural step is to Google the term “wordpress” and begin creating our blog.

When I type Wordpress into a Google search I get two results.

1. www.wordpress.org > Blog Tool and Publishing Platform
2. www.wordpress.com > Get a Free Blog Here
   

Humm … so what is the difference?

Wordpress.org is the true open source software avaliable for download. The benefit to this is that you will be able to install and customize you blog however you wish. You own the domain. You own the design. The downside, you need to install it in your hosting area.  Thankfully the majority of web hosts  have Fantastico or another Open Source software installer to simplify this task. Most hosts also have great customer service so feel free to give them a call and ask them to walk you though the process if you want the extra support.

Wordpress.com is a site that will host your wordpress blog for you for free. However, free is not exactly free.  With the free blog you will not be able to pick your own domain; you will be given a subdomain of www.{business_name}.wordpress.com. You will not be able to  customize the blog presentation beyond choosing one of seventy seven options and there will be  ads on your blog. Now, you can pay $55 a year to enable the custom domain, custom presentation and removal of ads; but why? You are already paying for hosting for your business’ website.

Give a choice between the two for a Business Blog I highly recommend wordpress.org. I’m a big fan of controlling all the strings when it comes to my business.