I love WordPress.  It’s a fantastic web application that’s grown from a simple blog into a full-blown contents management system (CMS).  You can have a site up and running, themed to look how you want it to, in a matter of minutes.  WordPress will even host it for you (but you can have more fun extending the site if you host it yourself).  It’s a real contender for anyone looking for a website CMS they can play with.  The fact that it’s open-source, so if you see something wrong or missing you can patch it yourself, is just the icing on the cake.  But why would you pick WordPress over something more powerful like Drupal or Joomla?

Simplicity, for one.  Installing plugins is handled entirely through the web interface, no digging around with an FTP program to get the right files in the right place.  To be fair, Drupal 7 does this as well.  Upgrading is also handled through the web interface – you get a message telling you there’s a new version available and asking if you want to upgrade.  A couple of clicks later and you’re upgraded.  Magic.  Drupal doesn’t do that!  Well, not yet, anyway.

The sweetest thing of all for me, though, is the Android application for site management – available from http://android.wordpress.org/.  I can write and edit posts, upload photos and videos direct from my phone’s camera, approve comments (or trash them for spam).  And it handles multiple blogs through the same app.  The only thing I can’t get from the app is the stats, because I’ve not installed the right plugin to my main site.

Anyone who needs to update their blog when they’re away from their computer should have an app like this to do the job.  Genius.

And I really must work out how to take screenshots from my phone.