A quick look at the most popular WordPress widgets is instructive in showing how beneficial they are, and the possibilities that they create for someone with enough web savvy.

Last Tweets Widget

The Latest Tweets widget is in many ways the Big Kahuna of the WordPress widget. Using this, you can show your readers the latest posts in your Twitter feed.

This is handy for many reasons – firstly, it alerts people to the fact that you have a Twitter account, and encourages them to visit your page, potentially adding your tweets to their timeline and giving you the marketing opportunities that that entails among other things. Secondly it demonstrates that you have an interactive web presence. If you don’t feel like blogging something, you can tweet it and your blog readers will still see it.

Blogroll Widget

The Blogroll widget is one which many bloggers like to use. Whatever your views on the “blogosphere” and whether bloggers are real writers, what cannot be denied is that there is a real community aspect to many of the best blogs. Chances are that if you write a blog, you will also read blogs. That being the case you can show some love for the bloggers you enjoy reading by including them in your blogroll.

People who like your blog may check them out, giving that blog more hits and making it more likely that the other bloggers will return the favor. Everyone gets more hits, and everybody’s happy.

Tag Cloud Widget

Adding a Tag Cloud widget is another blog-specific move you can make to give your blog that bit more user-friendliness. We would all like to think that our readers look at every blog post with the same degree of fascination, but the usual truth is that some readers find that a particular blogger will write merely well about some subjects, but brilliantly on others.

By adding tags to your blog posts, and including a tag cloud, you allow people to search for and read all your posts on a certain subject. The most used tags will end up larger and bolder, too, so people can see at a glance what to expect from your blog.

Book and Album Cover Widgets

There is also a range of Book and Album Cover widgets which allow you to link up with music and bookshop sites to display artwork on your site. This way if you are a music or literature buff, you can show people a little bit about what you’ve been reading or listening to recently.

This adds a personal touch and also gives people a bit of background to you as a person. Whether you are a blogger or just hosting a personal site, these widgets add depth to it.

It is mostly for this last group of people that the WordPress revolution has been such a major benefit – it acts, in a way, as a translator to give them an opportunity to make themselves understood without having to put in the time and effort to become fluent.

Creating a website is hard to do if your expertise lies elsewhere. However, not everyone can afford to outsource their web design, and there are several people, too, who feel that by giving the job of creating a website to someone outside the business they will lose something of the message they are trying to convey. WordPress has succeeded because it makes it possible for just about anyone to set up their own website. it would not have been so successful, however, if it were simply a one-size-fits-all entity that created a standard website from a little bit of original data. WordPress rewards effort.

If you create a website using WordPress, there are several applications you can use to make your website more interactive, more streamlined or more business-friendly. It may have an identity in most people’s minds as a blogging platform – and it is true that this is how WordPress really began – but it is a lot more than that. WordPress is innovative and user-driven. If you don’t want a blog, your site doesn’t need to be a blog. If you want to include a blog among many other things, you can also do that. Really, WordPress is simply a creation that makes it easier to have a quality website.

Another reason that WordPress has become so popular is that it is free. Although the free WordPress themes that are available to those who use it in its most basic form are not particularly diverse, and you may find that paying for a more niche theme suits you better, the software is free at the point of delivery. Considering the expense that is involved in setting up a website from scratch using specialist software – or handing the process over to an expert – this is something that makes WordPress a tantalizing option for the beginner.

Although there is an increasing field of competitors for WordPress’ crown as the site to head for if you want to create a good website, there is definitely an advantage in its position as one of the groundbreakers in this capacity. The name is well-known and associated with quality for free, something that is very much in vogue in a world that is still getting over a period of major financial uncertainty. Though there will be challengers to the position, WordPress remains a market leader.

An increasing number of people are using WordPress to build their websites, and as this continues, there will be more people who know that by making it easier to create a good WordPress site, there is money to be made. The most obvious example of this is in the responses you will get if you type WordPress themes into a search engine.

A basic WordPress site will be functional. If you wish to create a blog that will be easy to read and simple to navigate, then you really need do no more than register on WordPress and start writing. However, if you wish to define a specific identity, WordPress on its own will only take you so far. There are a few themes you can choose from, and these can be selected as simply as making a few clicks of a mouse. However, these are designed for non-specific mass appeal and by that logic they are limited in terms of real identity. If you want to be more innovative and stand out more, you may need to look elsewhere.

There are many people who create WordPress themes specifically to give wider options to users who have a specific need. Some of these people make their creations available for free, hosting them on their own sites which, due to their popularity, can then be hives for advertisement space. Others will design WordPress themes to a specific brief. So if, for example, you want to run a site which deals with a particular sports team, you can define the look you want to a person who will then design a WordPress theme that is identifiably influenced by that sports team.

You yourself can create WordPress themes, if you have enough knowledge of CSS and HTML coding. Because of WordPress’ ease of customization, you need only make a few changes to the coding it provides and tailor the look of your new site to a specific need. This is one of the major selling points of the software. It does a job for those who would not be able to operate without it, but also supports the more defined needs of those with a little more knowledge. Those who cannot write code at all will enjoy the fact that they are free to concentrate on content, while those who can are grateful for the framework.

These days, people are aware that there is a lot of competition for attention, and therefore it is valuable to be able to stand out from the crowd. Using the right WordPress theme will make this a whole lot easier, and finding the right theme is only going to get easier as skilled designers realize the potential to showcase their work and make money that WordPress provides.

While the people running both companies, and the users who align themselves specifically to one or the other, will argue that their site has its own specific identity and is very much a stand-alone entity, there can be no doubt that

WordPress and Joomla have many similarities. Both can do a lot of the same things. If you want to create a blog, you can do it with WordPress or with Joomla. If you want to make your site more general, then both platforms make it possible. However, there are many Joomla users who will not use WordPress, and as many vice versa – so what is the dividing line?

Many of Joomla’s supporters will indicate that it is “more than just a blogging platform”, either stating or implying that that is all WordPress is. And although this is not exactly true, there is enough of a grain of truth in it to make it an issue for some. WordPress gained most of its early adopters by being a very user-friendly site for bloggers, and has since diversified. On the other hand, Joomla was created after the development of WordPress and has to its advantage the fact that it was developed to be more right from the start.

There is some truth to the suggestion that the sites are similar enough to be used almost interchangeably while being different enough to have their own specific identities and attract people who will use one, and only one of the two for all of their site-creation needs.

For what it is worth, the two sites do specialize enough to give them their own defined position:

• If you wish to create a blog, or a specific “user generated” site, then WordPress is better, and is conceived with your needs in mind.
• If you wish to create something more individual, then it is better to use Joomla.

It would also be entirely fair to point out that if you have been using WordPress all this time and have found it to meet all your needs perfectly well, then a switch to Joomla will be more hassle than it really is worth. And, of course, vice versa.

One thing that might help you make up your mind is by looking through sites created using each application and deciding based on the ones which you find most applicable to your needs. Both are certainly good, user-friendly sites and won’t let you down.

The Internet is an arena of innovation, and is constantly seeing changes which make the experience more interactive, more diverse and more user-centered. The trick in the world of the Internet is to keep moving because you can be relevant one day and obsolete the next.

There has been no shortage of people claiming that because of Joomla’s greater range of applications, it will supersede WordPress and make the older system unnecessary, but is that true? While no-one could deny that Joomla is more versatile and powerful, surely WordPress has enough to hold its own?

What Joomla has in its favor is that it is certainly more adaptable for the dedicated user. If you want to put together a website for business purposes, the wide range of components and modules allow you to take it in pretty much any direction you want. However, there is a certain danger to this for a user who is not as technically-minded as others. If you found yourself at the seat of a rocket ship with a dashboard full of flashing lights and buttons, you would have to ask yourself if you could get it off the ground without causing a lot of damage – and this is similar to a novice using Joomla.

One might say that the benefit Joomla has over WordPress is that you can do more with it, while the disadvantage to Joomla is that, well, you can do more with it. The more you can do with something, the more you can do wrong – and that is more responsibility than a lot of people want. When things go wrong with Joomla, they are harder to fix. WordPress, for its part, is staggeringly user-friendly. Joomla is more adaptable, but WordPress is certainly more of a sensible option for plug-and-play purposes.

WordPress is fantastically easy to maintain. If you just want to blog, then you can be set up and working in a matter of moments – as long as it takes to register, create a title for your blog and start writing. With the huge range of widgets available – which are almost uniformly simple to install – you can add to your blog and make it easy to find online, as well as being easy to navigate. Joomla may be more adaptable, but it is one thing to say that and quite another to say that WordPress is rigid and fixed.

This is not any kind of attack on Joomla. It is a fantastic content management system – and that’s the point. Joomla and WordPress can easily co-exist because they have enough things making them different to appeal to separate markets, as well as being beneficial for different things in the same market.

WordPress is not going to shrivel up and die because Joomla is here and more adaptable. All that is going to happen is that the content management market will expand. Bloggers will still need a tool that lets them plug and play – if they want more features, they will go to Joomla, but there is still a need for WordPress.