WordPress is a marvelous creation.
It gives you a world-class blogging platform, a website creation tool, a full-featured Content Management System, and an extensible framework - all for absolutely no cost what-so-ever! Plus, the WordPress programmers are constantly developing new and better versions of the software and providing THOSE free of charge also.
The whole thing is simply amazing.
To add even more functionality, there is the concept of WP Plugins.
A WP plugin (short for WordPress Plugin) is a bit of code that can be "Plugged-in" to your WordPress installation in just a few seconds that will extend the usefulness of your blog by leaps and bounds.
For example, let's say you want to add SEO (Search Engine Optimization) capabilities to your blog - a superb idea, by the way - there is a WP plugin called "All In One SEO Pack" that will automatically take care of all the SEO needs you're ever likely to encounter.
It's regularly updated and - best of all - it's totally free! It's one of the most popular WP plugins for WordPress on the Internet.
Another free - and absolutely necessary - plugin is called "Akismet".
This little beauty checks comments posted on your blog against a huge database to see if they're spam or not.
You may or may not know that blog spam is a serious problem in WordPress land.
Nefarious spammers setup these robots that go out in search of blogs just to post prescription drug ads and the like.
In no time at all, your blog will get crammed full of this dreck and legitimate commenters will disappear from your site like dust in the wind! Akismet works in the background to detect and isolate these extraneous comments and keeps your blog spam-free - for the most part.
Again, this essential plugin is fully - and regularly - supported by its author and updates are always no-cost.
The 'Net is chock-full of sweet little mini-applications such as these.
The easiest way to begin to get a feeling for what's available to you is to simply log-in to your WordPress account at "http://www.
myblog.
com/wp-admin" and click on "Plugins" then "Add New".
The screen you will be taken to allows you to search for specific plugins or to simply browse through available choices.
To browse, all you need to do is to click on any of the keyword choices you see at the bottom of the screen in the keyword 'cloud'.
This will bring up a multitude of further choices that you can check-out at your leisure.
WP plugins are an integral part of the 'miracle' that is WordPress.
With the simple addition of the right plugin, you can completely transform your blog into anything your imagination can conceive!