This time period is all about awesomeness. Coming up in June, this blog will be one year old! I’ve used over three blogging platforms in this time and have always without fail come back to Wordpress. You know why? Cause it’s awesome!

This is why I think Wordpress is the best blogging platform:

It’s Free!

This is the best thing! People love free stuff and so do I! Other platforms such as Movable Type Pro cost quite a bit of money and people don’t generally want to invest in a blog without any traffic and are unsure if it will succeed or not. Wordpress is built by the community and for the community. With plugins and themes anyone can to their liking. Which brings me to my next point…

Plugins

Wordpress plugins are awesome and incredibly easy to use with Wordpress 2.7. They allow you to add great features to your blog or website with little fuss and ease of use. They provide great functionality and are free! My favourite plugins are  Twitterpress by Peppery, Optimal Title by Aaron Schaefer, FireStats by Omry Yadan and flickrRSS by Dave Kellam. What are yours?

Ease of Use

I use Dreamhost as my web host. As with other web hosts they provide awesome one click installs of some popular software. This makes it incredibly easy for someone to install Wordpress. The navigation and admin panel in Wordpress looks and acts amazing. It’s very easy to get around. They key elements are easily positioned. Wordpress gives you the ability to operate a website without any programming knowledge. If installing Wordpress on your blog is too hard for you, you can always try wordpress.com!

It Just Works!

It’s Apple’s favourite line but it’s very much applicable to Wordpress. Since Wordpress is so easy to use and there is such a large community behind it, it is always in its best form. Only occasionally do you get any error messages, if you do it’s normally on your end not Wordpress’s. If you do come across an error with Wordpress there is a huge community to help. Or feel free to Google it!

Themes!

With one click of a button you can easily change the look and feel of your blog! There are thousands and thousands of themes out there to easilly change your blog. A simple visit to the Wordpress Themes Repository or a simple Google search will get you away with finding awesome Wordpress themes!

Using WordPress makes you smarter.

Yes, it’s true, you’ll gain IQ points when you blog with WordPress because you do need to learn to take full advantage of it’s power. Wordpress may be intimidating at first but after a walk-through of the system and a few tips, you begin to add plugins, try out different features, and generally start exploring all that WordPress has to offer.

Download Wordpress today!

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I have just touched on what Wordpress has to offer. There are so many other features out there! What I love about Wordpress is the versatility. Feel free to point out any other awesome uses or features of Wordpress.

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Today is my one year anniversary of tweeting! My first tweet was posted on 29th May 2008 at 7:27:24 pm. Yep, and this blog post was published exactly to the minute I posted my first tweet! Over the past year I have tweeted nearly 4000 times and have ove 300 followers. The stats are not so important to me though, the connections and awesomeness I have discovered is priceless!

So as you know I love list posts! Here I will describe the best parts and uses of Twitter I have discovered over this year.

Real Time Search and Results

Twitter Search has been named as a Google killer. What do you think? The keyword here is real time. With Twitter Search you can instantly know what is going on in an event straight after or during it. For example the Mumbai attacks were tweeted by thousands of people in real time. Events first were heard about through Twitter rather than any other classic news source. The news about the Hudson Plane Crash was first heard on Twitter by Janis Krums who posted a picture.  Another example was the President Obama inauguration. The list of events tweeted real time are endless.

Immediate Answers

Another awesome feature of Twitter is almost immediate answers to a question or anything else. For example if I were to ask “Why do some folders in Windows have blue text?” I would get the answer that the “folder is compressed” instantaneously. How cool is that?

If you are working on a project or trying to brainstorm ideas Twitter is even better! Just post a tweet and get loads of responses (depending on how many followers you have). The possibilities are endless!

Interact with your Favourite Companies

The companies on Twitter I love to interact with are Orcon and Vodafone. Not only can I know what is currently happening on the network and know about new features but I can easily message them for support. If I’m having a problem with any one of my accounts I can just send a message to one of the awesome guys there and they can
easily help me out! I’m not saying this is the right channel to go for support but it is one awesome way to get it quickly!

Building Awesome Relationships

This point is short! Over the past year I have made awesome online friends, you know who you are. With these people I haven’t tried to befriend them to get information or help, just want to hang!

Just Interacting with Your Friends

Well, isn’t that the point of Twitter? You’re right! Just finding out what your friends are doing is the best feature for me. Long are the days when you would have to wait to call your friends them to find out what’s new in their world. Twitter is here and it’s set to stay!

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Here I have just surfaced the uses of Twitter. Have anymore? Discuss! Can’t wait for my next year of tweeting!

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