Best blogging platform for total control

WordPress.org pros:

• Endlessly customizable and extensible

• Widely used, so finding how-to guides and professional developers is easy

WordPress.org cons:

• Generally requires a fair bit of tinkering to get things working perfectly and looking great

More than 40% of all websites run on WordPress, from tiny local sites to major publications. It’s the most popular blogging platform and CMS by far, and since it’s open source, it’s free for you to run on your own server (other than the hosting costs).

If you want to be in control of everything with your blog, from how it looks to what you post, then WordPress.org is the option for you. And while you can run your own server from your basement, it’s a lot easier to use a hosting service (like Bluehost or Kinsta) that can automatically install WordPress for you. (Though maybe avoid WP Engine for now, because there’s a heap of drama going down between it and WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg.)

Not only does WordPress make the basics easy to do, but it really is endlessly customizable. There are tens of thousands of themes and plugins that change how it looks and what it does. There are themes for photographers and designers to show off their work, plugins that let you sell products through your blog posts, and anything else you can imagine. It’s a fairly wild world out there, but there is great community support that can help you navigate it.

The downside of running your own WordPress installation is that, unless you pay for managed hosting or employ a developer, you really are on your own. While basic stuff like installing a theme is relatively simple, customizing it so that it looks good and works with your content may take a bit of Googling. Similarly, while blogging with WordPress is easy and the Gutenberg editor is great to use, adding extra functionality with a plugin and getting it to work with your setup isn’t always user-friendly. Depending on what you’re trying to do and your level of experience with web tools, you may find WordPress a cinch—or a bit of a nightmare.

Still, the upsides of WordPress far outweigh the downsides. Even if you’re starting from scratch, its peculiarities don’t take that long to learn—and then you’ll have a useful skill.

WordPress also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically share your new posts to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Learn more about how to automate WordPress, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.