WordPress for the Domainless

November 21st, 2005

WordPress.com has gone live, and will no doubt be giving other free blogging services such as Google’s Blogger.com, the venerable LiveJournal, and MySpace a run for…well, not their money, because they’re all free…but you get the point.

Heretofore, WordPress has been available only as a downloadable open-source software package that you can install–again, for free–on any webserver configured to support PHP and MySQL. Kitty Time News is powered by WordPress software, as is my personal blog, Pegritz.com, and it’s a joy to work with: it’s ridiculously easy to set up (with some caveats, to be presently explained), extraordinarily configurable and tweakable, and just flat-out fun to use…but, of course, one must have a certain knowledge of PHP, MySQL, and XHTML/CSS coding to be able to really rock with it - and, of course, one must have server space to install it in the first place. But what happens if you’re not knowledgeable in certain aspects of web development or don’t have your own domain?

Now, all you need to do to create your own WordPress blog is go to WordPress.com and sign up for one! The site does all the hosting for you, and will help you set up your blog and get everything running comfortably. Whether you’re a web-coding nerd or a total n00b, you’ll be on deck in no time - and for you fellow Flock afficionados, you’ll find that WordPress.com is very amenable to access via Flock’s blogging functions.

So go forth and subject the world to your thoughts, dreams, ideas, opinions, and babble whether the world likes it or not!

(This article is cross-posted on Kitty Time News as well.)

By Derek C. F. Pegritz on November 21st, 2005 | Scategory: Computer Nerdery, Education, Open Culture |