Since the introduction of WordPress in 2003 by two young programmers, Matt Mullenwag and Mike Little, WordPress has truly taken on a life of its own. Early on a key goal for this blogging software was that it would be built on Open Source code making it free for everyone from the smallest home user to major Fortune 500 businesses. The software is an ongoing creation by a community of thousands of developers around the world.

WordPress can be found in three variations on the Internet; WordPress.com, WordPress.org and WordPress MU. WordPress.com is run on a multi-user platform hosted with WordPress MU which is the multi-user version of the software. WordPress.com is a hosted website operated my Automatic.com where many of the WordPress developers work. The focus of this article is on WordPress.org which is the self-hosted version of the platform.

By 2007 WordPress was gaining a following by home based business users because of the free nature of the software, the ease of installation on a virtual server running the associated PHP script files along with MySQL database and the additional tools called plugins and widgets. This combination of simple installation and many add-on tools is one reason that WordPress is popular. Another is the built in SEO, or search engine optimization features of WordPress.

Everyone wants traffic to their website and WordPress bloggers are no different. The big advantage for those using WordPress is that it includes features that help the search engines “read” your website in the way that works best for them to build their databases of content. Search engines do not see your website with eyes like humans but thy read the content and index it.

Because WordPress includes SEO tools like; .htaccess, permalinks, blogrolling and content pinging, search engines can quickly identify the new and updated content on WordPress blogs. This non-static nature of WordPress blogs makes them a great website platform for online business owners. Text and images along with audio and video files can make up the total content of the WordPress website to make it attractive to humans and search engines alike.

Another key feature of WordPress that makes it great for online business is that it is easy to add content to without the need for a highly paid webmaster. Many business owners have paid for beautiful websites, sometimes paying hundreds or thousands of dollars, to find out later that the webmaster is slow to respond to posting changes or may become totally unreachable. It is very easy to add new posts or make page changes with WordPress. No locally installed software is needed to create the posts or pages as the entire website is server based.

Today, because of the system and tools available with WordPress, the ease of editing and updating content and the search engine optimization built into WordPress, it is an excellent platform for businesses large and small to build their online business on.

If you would like to learn more about using WordPress for your home based business, please contact Henry Griner for more information.