WordPress.com Reviewer's Comments

Promote, inform, amuse or even rant to the far reaches of your brilliance, with WordPress.com. This blog service is fitting for amateur and prolific bloggers alike and is so uncomplicated to use that it easily earns our “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award.”

WordPress.com is a free blogging service inspired by the users of WordPress.org, who requested an easy to use, hosted blog service. WordPress responded by launching WordPress.com. This service is simple, hosts your blog, submits your blog to the Goggle blog directory and monitors your stats; in essence, this is an all–inclusive free blog package.

Unlike many free blog services, this service does not load your blog with ads and WordPress is all about blogging, they are not trying to double as a social networking site. This service gives you every tool you need to build and promote your blog; additionally, WordPress.com is the only free service we found that gives you referrer stats without having to add a third–party application.

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Blog Design Tools:  

This site is intended for non–coders, so it does not offer open source templates, but they do provide over 45 templates. You can customize the templates with your own header image, font color, sidebar widgets and more.

The posting box is easy to use and can be used in either text or HTML mode, it also has a spell check and a preview. Unfortunately, it does not let you change the color or style of the font in your posts. You can add links and images easily, however images are added by URL, so if you are using your own image you have to upload it and use the WordPress assigned URL.

This is a great service, but if you are really interested in opensource, do–it–yourself type blogs, see WordPress.org or Blogger.

Promotion/ Tracking Tools:  

WordPress.com sends your blog information to both Google and Technorati and allows readers to subscribe to RSS or Atom feeds. We quickly found our sample blog on Google within a day by keyword.

This free service offers the best traffic stats available including views, top posts, referrers and search engine terms. It displays stats for the previous thirty days in a line graph and relates feed stats.

This service also supports private blogs and you can block particular words in comments or specific users from leaving comments. Unlike many services, WordPress.com has a search comment tool and a spam blocker so you can eliminate spam comments or useless, non–contributory comments.

Ease of Use:  

WordPress is designed for the average, non–coding user. You do not have to know HTML to post an attractive blog with WordPress.com, you also do not have to know how to submit your blog – the service routinely submits your blog to Google’s blog directory. We also liked it because you can change things like your header image without having to figure out pixel by pixel size. Sidebar widgets can be added and arranged by drag and drop and most other alterations are just as easy.

Technical Help/Support:  

This service offers support through helpful FAQs, tutorials, a searchable knowledgebase and comprehensive weblogs, such as “Lorelle on WordPress.” This site also hosts many user contributed blogs with tips, tricks, advice and much more. Unlike many services, WordPress accepts emails.

Summary:  

Originate a stylish, ad free blog and start spreading your message today with WordPress.com. We think that recreational and accomplished bloggers alike will find the simplicity of WordPress liberating.