WordPress is a popular free open source system that provides a very different alternative to Dreamweaver. Version 3.1 was released on Feb 28th 2011.
Anyone can get up and running with a blogsite within minutes with free domain and hosting via the WordPress.com site (I set up impstv.wordpress.com) but for the full Website experience as demonstrated by Joe you need to download about 10mb as a zip file from the WordPress.org site, expand the zip and put the contents into a folder on your Website, upload this folder to your host and fill in a couple of boxes to activate the database. Full details are in a 'readme' file in the zip package.
MakeUseOf.com provide this free pdf guide to creating a WordPress website, (password 'awd' will be removed from here soon to protect their copyright) along with several other guides available just through free registration. Sign up!
To use the Wordpress.org system requires using a hosting company that provides some database support such as MySQL (you don't need to actually do anything with the database except through the WordPress interface).
Some hosts that include support:
- freehostia (free!)
- easyspace.com starterplus is £3.99pcm
- evohosting.co.uk and Joe will also be providing hosting soon
WordPress has evolved to become much more than just a tool for bloggers, it's a good choice for creating portfolios and among the millions built using WP are prestigious sites such as number10.gov.uk and whitehouse.gov.
CreativePro WordPress tutorial part 1, part 2, part 3 Using Dreamweaver for WordPress
To personalise your WordPress presentation you can buy themes or create your own.
WordPress has over 9000 plug-ins available including:
- a number of e-commerce solutions
- a way to show your favicon
- free social networking plug-in buddypress to create your own Facebook-like features such as groups and friend requests.
Sites by Joe include inhampshire.net which showed how easy it is to change a theme with a click. horroruk.com
jacehall.net features random backgrounds and headers, twitter feeds etc, OpenFilm allows users to change the backgound colour of the entire site by choosing from a drop-down list.
stylewp.com themes is a small company based in Blackpool trying to look large.
widgets are a type of plug in. More info at automattic
To improve your Google friendliness Joe recommends that you set your Permalink preferences (in Site Admin > Options) using Custom Structure to /%category%/%postname%/
WordPress Support
The WordPress Codex
The Codex is the encyclopedia of all things WordPress. It is the most comprehensive source of information for WordPress available.
The Development Blog
This is where you'll find the latest updates and news related to WordPress. Bookmark and check often.
WordPress Planet
The WordPress Planet is a news aggregator that brings together posts from WordPress blogs around the web.
WordPress Support Forums
If you've looked everywhere and still can't find an answer, the support forums are very active and have a large community ready to help. To help them help you be sure to use a descriptive thread title and describe your question in as much detail as possible.
WordPress IRC Channel
Finally, there is an online chat channel that is used for discussion among people who use WordPress and occasionally support topics. The above wiki page should point you in the right direction. (irc.freenode.net #wordpress)