WordPress is a popular, free, open-source blogging application that can be installed on a domain either as part of a site or as the basis of the entire site. It allows the site owner or contributors to make additions to the site themselves. It can be used as a content management system (CMS) for small to medium sites. In fact, you can ignore the blogging part and just have pages, making it look like a normal website – and one you can log into and edit from anywhere. WordPress templates, or themes, are ready-made designs which can be used as is or be customized. Many plugins are available that offer a wide variety in function.
WordPress is a very active platform that is going to be around for a long time. Like Windows on your PC, it issues regular updates, including security updates (this is a good thing), which are easy to implement from the backend.
WordPress keeps getting better. I changed this site to a WordPress platform in March 2011 (still in progress, like a carpenter’s house).
Top right: The Mahone Bay Pool website was built in 2011 and was kept updated over the summer by the teachers and lifeguards. What a boon it was for parents!
Above left: MLA Pam Birdsall posts regular news items to her site and wants them found by search engines. So I switched her site over to a WordPress platform for SEO purposes (search engine optimization) more than any other reason. Now it’s working almost as hard as Pam does!
I’ve been taking care of the website for our local French school, Centre scolaire de la Rive-Sud (above, left) since 2005. In 2010 I moved it to a multi-user WordPress network. The network gives every teacher and every committee the opportunity to have a website and/or blog.
Boss Solar (above, middle) installs solar thermal and photovoltaic systems in and around Toronto. Mike, the owner, writes blog posts on his area of expertise, but most of the site is like a regular site with pages.
My old labour of love, the Nova Scotia Photo Album, which I started in 2000, has a WordPress blog. I’ve designed the main part of the site and the blog to match each other.
I’ve set up many other WordPress installations. My husband has four blogs: one concerning his professional interest in regulatory affairs which is attached to his website, one on Civil Aviation, Civ Av, a French blog about sailing, Voile pour tous, and an English blog about sailing, Popular Sailing.
Other family members have blogs and websites, including my music therapist sister at Deep Soul Singing and my late father at FlemmingHolm.ca where his many letters to the editor and to politicians are preserved in electronic perpetuity.
If you want a website you can update yourself from any computer, if you’re willing to climb a relatively small learning curve so that you can maintain it yourself, if you’re interested in the functionality available through the wide variety of plugins and themes available, then WordPress may be for you.