WordPress is a free blogging software package used by millions of individual bloggers, small businesses, and multinational corporations—including media titans like CNN, Fox, and the New York Times.

While its basic function as a blogging tool is well-known, WordPress is actually a powerful website content management system (CMS), too. With its rich text content editor, site navigation tools, and thousands of third party plug-ins, it’s a perfect fit for a small businesses looking to establish an inexpensive but professional Web presence.¹

In this recent USA Today profile, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg noted:

People might start with LiveJournal or Blogger, but if they get serious, they’ll graduate to WordPress. We try to cater to the more powerful users.

This is certainly true. I’m a big fan of Google’s Blogger, and I use it for a variety of personal projects. But when it came time to choose the software platform for Bits & Bytes 2.0, I knew I wanted something more powerful, polished, and professional, so I chose WordPress.

An entrepreneur looking to set up a basic Web site with WordPress has two options:

1. WordPress.com — It’s free to sign up for a Website in the format (YOURNAME).WordPress.com, which includes an impressive amount of basic features.
2. Your Domain (.com) — The WordPress server software is open source, which among other things means that it’s free to download and use. As well as offering this as a premium feature at WordPress.com, many Web hosting providers are happy to support WordPress, too, and make the setup process very simple.

As ever, hosting your own Website or blog is the more professional option, but has relatively minor upfront and ongoing costs.² There’s no reason to take the plunge sight unseen, though—since WordPress.com blogs are free, why not head over and set one up to see what you think? In less than two minutes, you can set up a new blog and start poking around under the hood.

If/when you decide you’re ready to host your own WordPress website or blog, and don’t already have a Web host, check out this earlier rave review for my own hosting provider, Dreamhost—and be sure to use this exclusive coupon to save some money. Happy blogging!

1. In many contexts, “website” and “blog” are largely interchangeable terms. Technically speaking, a blog is a subset of the more general website classification; all blogs are websites, but not all websites are blogs. The technical differences between the two are trivial, but a blog is usually organized around regular content updates listed in reverse-chronological order. [↩]
2. Costs will include domain name registration ($15) and monthly Web hosting (from $5.95/mo to $10.95/mo at Dreamhost, for example. If you already have a Web host, and they support WordPress, then there’s no additional fee for the WordPress software.). [↩]