A blog is a discussion or information site published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often were themed on a single subject. More recently “multi-author blogs” (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users.
Blog hosting is all about the features that allow you to install and/or use a blog-software such as WordPress, Typepad, b2evolution, Nucleus, etc. These features will include:
- Scripting support (i.e. PHP)
- Database support (i.e. MySQL)
- Large amounts of storage space and bandwidth
- Easy one-click install (i.e. Fantastico)
There are many Open Source CMS which has been evolved over the past 10 years. The websites developed in CMS has been on top edge because of their less expensive, fast and easier to manage features. Besides, it is more flexible so you can move to other resources .Among all CMS WordPress, Joomla, Drupal have been the primary choice. According to builtwith.com WordPress is reported to be used in 48% of websites and the rest part is shared between other technologies. If we look at Google trends then WordPress searches has continually risen, while Joomla has declined. Expert recommends WordPress, if you want your website to use parallax scrolling and mobile device responsive.
Informative WordPress Statistics
48% of Technorati’s top 100 blogs are managed with WordPress :
When there are large quantities of content management systems available, this will increase volumes of WordPress popularity. If anyone decides to go with WordPress, then he will surely be with good company. The New York Times, Mashable, CNN and eBay all these organizations run their blogs on most popular CMS in the world which named WordPress.
WordPress related keywords score 37 million searches per month :
The keyword “WordPress” alone has received several searches every month. When anyone counts the searches of all keywords with WordPress, the monthly figure will be around 37 million searches. WordPress search is five times as much as Joomla as and nine times more than Drupal.
6 New WordPress.com Posts Every second :
On WordPress.com blogs 6 new posts are published every second. The average posts are 342 per minute, 20,000 per day and 7.49 million annually. WordPress.org is not only the world’s most popular self-hosted CMS solution but the free version is also famous on the list of free blogging platforms.
46 Million Downloads of WordPress.org :
The free WordPress.org platform supports self-hosted websites which has been downloaded 46 million times in the previous year. User cannot have downloaded WordPress and have to upload FTP manager himself, but when installed using Fantastico then it was counted as a download.
WordPress is Most Popular with Business websites :
The top 10, 00,000 number of business sites are powered by WordPress is five times the number of WordPress-managed news sites. WordPress got high rank as one of the most blogged topics in the online marketing.
98 Versions of WordPress to Date :
Even with the less number of employees they are rolling out new updates once every few weeks. In addition, WordPress.com source code is updated 60-80 times per day. Therefore, there is continuously change o this platform daily.
Some reasons, why WordPress is most favored option:-
- Ease of installation: – Although ‘Fantastico’ has made all CMS very easy to install, but without this service WordPress is easiest among all three top CMS.
- Better marketing communication:- WordPress is developed as blogging platform to communicate. So it is customizable and open source for other systems to connect with its two feature RSS and XML-RPC.
- Managing and Maintenance:- WordPress is simple enough to be managed with non-technical staff except core technical works related to maintaining the database, Ecommerce activities, and integrating with CRM.Wordpress.org ensures the core infrastructure of CMS is always up to date with current technology.
- Customization with plug-ins:- With WordPress covering a huge share of market, there are more programmers who develop various utility plug-in and available free in market which are able to add a special functionality.
- Ease of publish:- With WordPress you do not have any need to follow cumbersome steps of publishing an article unlike Joomla ,rather you can publish your blog or webpage by just clicking ‘publish ’ button.
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- Inmotions
The major disadvantage of WordPress is that it is easier to hack and penetrable. But with following ways you might be able to improve the security:-
- Username and Password Strength: With the use of good password, we can prevent many of the sneakers from peeking into your website. A password should be alphanumeric with the use of capital and small case alphabets. The compromise of password may be the biggest harm for your website. The most common username in WordPress is ‘admin’, keep yourself from choosing this username as if hacker gets your username then he will just have to guess you password.
- Secure hosting: You should also check if your hosting provider is using enough security measures. Your website may be vulnerable to attacks if there is any security breach in hosting.
- Backups and timely updates: You should back up your website on timely basis. There are many tools available but it is recommended to back up with hosting control panel. Along with backups, timely updates are also necessary as newer versions are often released to fix security issues with previous version.
- Security plug-in and monitoring: More often when a website is hacked it is completely hidden from public view. So you should use tools to monitor when your website goes down. Moreover there are many security plug-in available which prevents illicit login attempts.
Internet industry, Mobile and digital technology are now heading towards new consideration and concern. These are:-
- Google has now begun to start considering if a website is secure or not to show on search results. Security depends over server, SSL certificates and HTTPS.
- If your website is not mobile friendly and effective for mobile visitor then you have to rethink .You can review Google analytics to ascertain how many visitors are using mobile phone to view your site. A new technology name ‘parallax scrolling’ has made navigation easier to mobile visitors. This technology is needed to be incorporated in your current website.
- Structured data is much important as it assists search engine about content in websites.
- XML sitemaps are another thing that is not directly accessible by visitor but helps search engine understand the construction of website.
There are two ways of creating a blog
One is you can create a blog for free with free web hosting and the other is investing in a paid blog hosting provider. If you are creating a personal blog to keep in touch with your family and friends, then a free blog hosting service would likely be sufficient for your needs. Free blog hosts, such as Blogger and WordPress.com, offer easy-to-use interfaces that make it simple for people with limited technical skills to start blogging. There is no script installation or database configuration – as the blog software is all setup and ready for you.
Most free blog hosting options also provide a limited selection of templates so you can alter the look of your blog to better suit your personal tastes. You won’t be able to remove ads from the site, however, since this is the primary way free blog hosts generate revenue.
For bloggers who are hoping to turn their blog into a source of supplemental income, it’s best to invest in paid blog hosting. With a paid account, you will have your own domain and greater options for customizing your blog. If you want to run ads on your site, you will be the one who keeps the income generated. You will also be able to accommodate larger amounts of traffic. Many paid blog hosting providers offer easy one-click installation for major blog software’s, so you can get your blog up and running in just a few clicks.
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