Wordpress ® is an open-source blogging platform or software. What this means is users of open source software are able to freely use the software, view the source code, alter and re-distribute open source software. In other words, you can use it for free.

Here are a few reasons that set WordPress ® apart as a superior blogging application and why you'll love using WordPress ® for your own blogging...

Total control and easy-to-use.

With Wordpress ®, you own your own blog. Your blog is not dependent on a blogging service's hosting or publishing service. In fact, you can install as many Wordpress ® installed blogs on your own hosting accounts, across as many of your domains as you want, and you enjoy total control over them.

Plus all you need to do after you install, is to login, write a new entry, click publish and you're done. Easy as 1-2-3.

Cost-effective. C'mon, it's free.

As mentioned before, Wordpress ® is open source, which offers you a free blogging application to use today. As a result, you can install multiple blogs across your many domains without any concern of incurring costs.

Compared with other blogging applications that charge a monthly fee for you to blog, WordPress ® is a free to use application.

Strong community of users and developers.

Wordpress ® has a strong user and developer community, with comprehensive support and documentation (although the geek-speak will go over a beginner's head - that's why we're here to un-geek it all for you).

With a strong user base, many of the "bugs" get worked out very quickly with revisions. Plus with so many users, there are many guides and workarounds featured on blogs created to help others in the community.

These developers create modules of code, called "plugins", which offer enhanced performance and functionality for your blog. There are many plugins available for free downloads from developer blogs.

Convenient 1-click install.

Installing a Wordpress ® blog is a cinch with its 1-click install feature offered via Fantastico in a cPanel hosting company's control panel.

If the above sounds foreign to you, here's the cheat sheet:

a. cPanel: short for Control Panel. Wordpress ® is hosted on your own host account and if your host offers a 'cPanel' interface, then you're good to go with the next phrase...

b. Fantastico: a feature of cPanel, which allows you to install free scripts on your website with a click of a button.

Customize templates, themes and colors conveniently.

Easily edit a Wordpress ® blog's templates and colors via cascading style sheets (CSS).

CSS is a simple mechanism for customising the formatting of Web pages, by defining fonts, colours of titles, paragraph spacing, etc. so that a change to the CSS enables those changes to reflect across the entire site in one fell swoop.

In addition, there are many talented creative developers in the WordPress ® community who create themes or design layouts that enable you to switch your blog's theme with the ease of 1-click. Simply upload the designers' theme, and activate it in your WordPress ® blog's Presentation Theme control panel.

Customize blog directories to update or "ping".

"Pinging" is a notification to blog directories that your blog has a new page addition, and encourages them to visit your blog and index it into its database.

Other blogging platforms set a default ping to only one blog directory. This limits your automatic notification for pinging.

In comparison, WordPress ® offers you a Notification Panel that you can insert additional blog directories to "ping". This affords you to be indexed by a wider base of blog directories, which helps in expanding the exposure of your blog.

Connection times.

When you're blogging with blogging platforms that host the blogs for you (where you have to login to their service to make entries to your blog), you're dependent on their servers for publishing your posts. Because of the vast number of bloggers using their network, publishing times can slow down to a crawl. (it's like watching paint dry!)

However, publishing with WordPress ® is reliant on your own host company's server - which is typically much faster. Blogging with WordPress ® offers almost no wait time, and speeds up your blog publishing.

Categories and sub-categories.

Categories offer you the links in the side navigation to provide sections that your visitors can click on.

One major frustration with Blogger, another blogging platform, is a lack of a categorization or sub-categorization features. To offer links in the sidebar navigation, one has to wade in code to add it manually.

With WordPress ®, categories come standard. Simply add categories and sub-categories for easy organization and usability for your blog.

Comment capabilities.

A 'Comment' is a feature that encourages your visitors to offer feedback or participate in a discussion about your postings. This feedback gives you an immediate connection with your visitors, and this helps you determine how to serve the needs of your audience more effectively.

With WordPress ®, you can choose to either receive comments or not. You can also choose to moderate comments, in order to manage derogatory comments from appearing on your blog comments.

Revenue-generating flexibility.

Businesses and marketers consider tools such as the WordPress ® blogging application with respect to how well these tools serve them to reach their desired outcomes - one of which is to generate profit.

With WordPress ®, you can easily add contextual advertising (like Google AdSense or Yahoo Publishers Network ads), links to merchants or suppliers you're affiliated with, and also promote your own product and service offerings.

The word "BLOG" is a combination of 2 words - "WEB" + "LOG". An online journal if you will. Many business owners have wised up to the use of weblogs, or blogs, to deliver their business message - in a personal voice - through the power of blogs. Here are a few reasons why you'll love blogging.

Express yourself.

Have you always wanted to express yourself in business, politics, religion, family, music, arts, video... basically, a slice of life? Now you can - easily. Whether it be in text, photos, audio, video or hieroglyphics, you can enjoy the freedom to do so.

No waiting on your webmaster.

How much time have you wasted waiting on your webmaster? With blogging, you don't have to punish yourself anymore. Imagine a blog to be a platform that was designed by people who hate to waste time as much as you do. Just login from anywhere in the world, write a new page, and publish. It's now live for all the world to see. Get a blog - it ought to save you some time and your sanity, too.

Full speed publishing.

Have you tried to publish website pages the 'old way'? if you do, you know it involves your HTML publishing software, an image editing software and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software - then you'll begin the endless process of create, save, upload, view, tweak, save, upload, view - ad nauseum. Heaven forbid you accidently override another team member's work on your host - been there done that - (head slap) "DOH!"

With blogging, you can say good bye to the above 'cruel and unusual punishment'. After a superman-quick install and some fun customization, simply login, write a new page, and publish. Voila! And your team member and you can be friends again. Web publishing using blogs is really the new black!

Be "findable" on the search engines.

I'm sure you've already figured this out on your own, haven't you? If you haven't, here's a tip. A website that is positioned well on Google, MSN and Yahoo is like owning the food court in your local mall. It doesn't matter which mall you're in, or what cuisine you serve in the food court, you're going to have 'walk-in traffic' and visitors coming through 'hungry' for what you have to offer - in droves.

This is a hot topic on the internet - how to be found. This is achieved in much easier fashion with blogging than not. A clue to why this works like a charm with blogs? It attracts search engines and blog directories (through its built-in notification features) like 'white on rice' - and also because blog owners continually add new and fresh content to their blogs. (In addition, I offer other insider strategies to be easily "findable" - included 'backstage' in my membership section).

Dialogue with your visitors, effortlessly.

Would you like your prospects and customers to share their comments, feedback, ideas, and concerns with you? What would your business look like if you created a whole new successful product line from a prospect's ingenious idea, or retain a segment of your customers through an honest concern expressed?

You can accomplish this efficiently through feedback forms on your blogs. This 'feedback loop' can be worth thousands or millions to your business.

Of course, if you're concerned about irrelevant comments, they can be moderated prior to publishing.

Leadership through blogging.

If you blog regularly and consistently add value to your readers, you'll begin to develop a readership that likes and trust your style, perspectives, rants, thoughts and opinions. This is where you can build your platform for being the thought leader or expert in your specific field or market. With this leadership comes influence and power... use it wisely.

Podcasting and videocasting, simplified.

Podcasting is the distribution & syndication of media files - be it audio or video, or both. This technology made simple can be used for business, sports, politics, religion, family, and even silly homemade videos. Basically, any topic of your choice can be delivered through audio & video podcasting, published on a blog, easily and effectively.

Showcase photo and image galleries.

You can easily showcase product shots, pictures of staff servicing happy customers, and even business location pictures.

Or if you're using your blog for personal reasons, you can showcase family snapshots, baby photos, special events pictures like your child's birthday or graduation.

Imagine the possibilities. Think it, do it. How about offering your photos in a gallery or offer your blog visitor to view it in a slide show. Yes, it can be easily accomplished with a blog.

Imagine the possibilities...

Blogging can move your business forward - whether its bridging the gap with your customers, saving time and money, achieving stronger search marketing results, enhancing your credibility, or even distributing your multimedia.

Blogging can also be fun and personal. Think connecting families abroad, via text, audio, video, photos - even Grandma Bertha from England can see Little Johnny bat his first home run hit in Little League Baseball in Small Town, USA. She may even send $10 to Little Johnny through your PayPal account through your blog. Imagine that!