The Power of WordPress

So what is WordPress? Well, put simply, it is everything you are looking at right now. This article is WordPress. This blog is WordPress. In fact, over 25 million blogs and websites worldwide are built on a strong WordPress foundation, and WordPress sites receive tens of millions of visitors every single day. It is used by everyone from casual bloggers like myself to celebrities and large businesses. This is one of the main contributions to its power – it’s infinitely flexible.

It is so flexible in fact, that most times you wouldn’t even realise that you are looking at a WordPress powered site. While most casual users will opt for a basic theme like the one you see here, this is by no means fixed. With some clever designing a theme can be manipulated or even written from scratch to produce a totally unique and wholly professional look. The site need not even follow a conventional blog layout. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination… (and coding skills!)

The Official WordPress LogoIf you’re one of those people that runs a mile at the slightest sniff of some PHP or HTML, then there’s no need to worry! WordPress prides itself on its ‘famous 5-minute installation’ and it really is that simple. It requires no coding knowledge whatsoever which is ideal for companies who need a quick, easy to maintain site and for standard bloggers who often have no knowledge of web languages at all. For a WordPress admin, the ‘dashboard’ is their home. From here, they can add posts, edit posts, add new users, approve comments, and even change the entire look and feel of the site in a few simple clicks – with not a scrap of code in sight!

So, you ask me, what’s the catch? How much will this cost me? The answer – nothing. That’s right, WordPress is completely free and open source. It started in 2003 as a couple of lines of code and has subsequently grown exponentially to become the framework it is now. But one thing has remained the same: it was designed ‘by developers, for developers’, and the community at WordPress are happy to help with any issues or queries. After all, your suggestion may help them to improve the project for everyone’s benefit. Everybody is a member of WordPress, and this is its power. It’s globally useful, it’s globally flexible, it’s globally accessible, and it’s globally free.

How to add an email subscription form to your blog

Earlier in the week, Wayne John from Southern California Web Development commented on how it would be great if you could subscribe via email to Technology Bloggers. This way you could read the latest and greatest content as an email, and then just visit the stuff that interests you to comment etc.

After a little puzzling I managed to enable FeedBurner’s email setting and add a subscribe widget to the sidebar.

Google FeedBurner LogoTo subscribe via email like many already have, please enter your email in the box on the sidebar, or even in the box below 🙂

Enter your email address to get free updates about new articles!

As this blog talks about WordPress, RSS feeds and stuff like that, I thought I might as well help other bloggers set up a similar system 🙂

What do I need for people to be able to subscribe via email?

Well first of all you need a feed. WordPress handles this nicely so that shouldn’t be too difficult! Second you need a feed manager. I use FeedBurner. It’s simple and easy to use. The problem with it at the moment is that it is really slow at updating, meaning that when I post an article at 2 in the afternoon, only 8 o’clock next morning does the feed update – for example. This isn’t a major issue for email subscription at the moment though.

How do I enable FeedBurner email subscriptions?

Click on the profile of the blog you want to enable emails for, then go to the ‘Publicize‘ tab. From here look down the sidebar and find ‘Email Subscriptions‘ – click that. You should then get a page looking a bit like the one in this picture.

Enable/Activate FeedBurner Email SubscriptionsThen click Activate!

You will then be taken to a page called ‘Subscription Management‘. Here is where you get your code! Now you can ether get the box code or get the code which links to the subscription page. I chose to have a box, but you take your pick. Add the code to your site/blog and hey presto! Test it out yourself if you like, but the code should work and your readers should now be able to subscribe to your blog via email.

Can I customise the FeedBurner code?

Yes – to a degree. I am not 100% sure what Google’s policy is on modifying the code, but I imagine they are okay with it. My default code would make Technology Bloggers ‘subscribe box’ look like this

Enter your email address: 

Delivered by FeedBurner

but my modifications make a much smother (I think so anyway) this

Enter your email address to get free updates about new articles!

Happy subscribing and happy creating readers and bloggers 🙂