This article is a guest blog entry by Greg Bocic.
http://snob.blog.siol.net/
Let’s just start with something you should all know by now: blogs are just plain content management systems stripped down to offer only “news article” publishing, that means, no forums, or any other additional module. You can blog with e107, or even Fusion, while on the other side, with a little knowledge of PHP one may also create a full-blown portal from wordpress!
So why do people like John Chow, or the even more famous people (like Yours Truly >:) ) use the wordpress blog CMS?
Note: I decided not to write this post in a “top x” form, because the info in the article is not appropriate for such a break-down.
The many pros
The community site of WordPress is superb, mostly because of the sheer size of the community itself. You can easily navigate to the download site and get your fresh copy of WordPress (2.2.1 is the newest version). It’s not like Plone’s site, where the navigation’s just weird. WordPress is of course free software, but of the highest quality. Everything is very well documented. When you install your blog, you can customize it. There are literaly thousands of available plugins and widgets. The code of wordpress is simple to understand and not messed-up. I also like the fact that there are many templates to choose from. It is significant that many famous blogs don’t use custom templates, mostly just slightly modified templates from the themes DB of wordpress.com.
The Dashboard, or the admin panel of wordpress is easy-to-use (Joomla people should copy this) and you’re all set up for blogging in no time! You can add multiple users, plugins, themes, widgets, categories… actually, the possibilities are endless. I like the timestamp feature which lets you set the time your post appears to the public.
The few cons
I don’t like WordPress forums. They have a bad template… it was even worse before, because WordPress was one of the leading opensource projects to totally integrate the lame “Web 2.0″ concept (you must admit it’s a bit overused). And the bad thing is also the dilemma between widgets integration and manual sidebar editing; with the millions of plugins one wants to install each comes with it’s unique readme instructions. It sort of confuses SEO maniacs like myself, when we install about 30 different plugins.
In conclusion, wordpress can be a great platform, especially if the blogger using it knows what to do with it. Blogging itself is really like playing an instrument. Practice, practice and more practice! Back to my own blog, then 
Nice little post Casey. Hope your little trip went well!
And yes, I love WordPress. The customization of it is just super super good. Bored how your site looks? Just go download a new Theme, takes 2 seconds and about that much to get yourself up and running. And I also agree with you on the sidebar/widget thing too. Personally, I was doing some research on writing Plugins and it just gave me a headache. I’ll get to it soon though.
P.S. My second child – I’m naming her/him
“iBush Web Mackel 2.0″ And then I’m just going to sell him/her to Apple.
Haha. This was a guest post by Greg Bocic so thank him for the post! I love wordpress too.
Finding internet connection here is toughy, I couldn’t find any the past two days! I’m lucky I found one today, and hopefully I will have connection until I return on Saturday!
Oh wow, I didn’t know you were going to be gone a whole week! How’s the weather? Where I am the temp is nice but it’s humid like a mug.
It’s been pretty nice so far. And yeah I won’t be back until Saturday but I will try my best to keep posting!
…You’re a warrior.