My (short) Review Of Wordpress.com based on own my experience.

[mik 0]

Discalaimer: I have no idea how a "Blogger" type blog works, so I cannot compare Blogger with WordPress. My gut feeling tells me that WP wins out, though.

 

I decided to start a blog at Wordpress.com and thought I might write some of my early impressions up.

 

Let me say right off the bat all my impressions have been nothing but good so far, so this might not sound so much like a review as a promotion.

 

One of the first things I noticed was that WPCom allows as many blogs as you like all from the same user name/passwd account. Great if you want to have several different blogs that cover subjects that do not mesh well with each other: Say if you are a politician who likes gaming casinos, you could keep the gaming out of the politics. Or if you like NASCAR racing and Formula One, obviously it's better if you don't mix the two on the same site, it could get confusing and the two topics would end up detracting from one another.

 

Another thing worth mentioning at the start, my new blog has only been up for a bit less than 24 hours, yet it is already listed by google, in fact looking at the google cache, google found my blog very ealy on in my blog's career. Such is the power of WPCom I guess.

 

 

There is a strapline that runs across the top of your blog if you are logged in with the following clickable options:

* My Account

o Edit Profile

o Contact Support

o WordPress.com

o Log Out

 

* My Dashboard

* New Post

* ?Frequently Asked Questions?

 

* Blog Info

o Add to Blogroll

o Report as spam

o Report as mature

 

* Go to a random blog...

 

That last option is an interesting one. There is an arrow on the extreme right that, if clicked, takes you to the next randomly selected WPCom blog. If you are committed to reading diverse blogs, this might be an alternative to blogging heaven. When I was clicking maniacally to view all the different themes in action, I did notice a number of blogs in French and some in Spanish.

 

Which leads me to say that in the languages option in the admins area there over a hundred different language options, whether they all work I have no idea.

 

Clicking on the ?Frequently Asked Questions? brings up a FAQ that seems very good. The topics covered are:

 

Akismet (anti-spam program), Adverts, Appearance & Themes, Posting, Pictures and Video, Widgets, Plugins, Administration, Feeds, Feedback, Errors, Deleted/Suspended, Technical and Misc.

 

There are more than 100 answers to the common questions. Then of course there is the very good documentation and forum on Wordpress.org as well, a good bit of which applies to WPCom too.

 

Best bit about a WPCom blog?

There are 41 different themes to choose from, and changing the appearance of your new blog is quick and easy. If you like a bit of variety in your life you could have a different look to your blog for every day in the month and still have themes to spare.

 

Drawbacks

None that I can think of.

Edited August 8, 2006 by mik (see edit history)