For years I operated this blog using Movable Type, and up until about 8-months ago, that was fine.
However, as time went on it became clear that I was missing out on a ton of flexibility with WordPress mainly due to all of the plugins that were already available – and that come out often.
So, finally I made my move and upgraded to WordPress, but not before investing in a terrific administration, design, SEO and plugin configuration manager from Semiologic.
For any of you that currently operate a WordPress blog, but may not be savvy when it comes to design or technical aspects of plugins, adding headers, search engine optimization and other important aspects of running your blog – Semiologic does a ton of that for you.
Frankly, the biggest benefit for me was to allow me to customize my blog, quickly select and configure over a dozen plugins from hundreds available – all in less than a few minutes! Nice.
Here are some of the things I was able to do without touching a line of sourcecode or learning anything technical about my WordPress blog:
– add my own header by clicking a button
– customized the look and feel and content on my side navigation panels
– quickly insert images
– centrally manage my Adsense ads throughout the blog
– choose from many different blog formats with one button click
– use the “feature picker” pick list to mass-activate features with a single click
– drag & drop widgets onto the sidebars, for example, if you want a “buy me a beer” function that links automatically to Paypal – you simply drag it over. Use the same process to add recent comments, calendars, categories, opt-in forms – or many other choices, all with a single drag&drop function
– Lots of search engine optimization functions applied automatically such as archiving, split pages, built-in tagging, easy-to-manage ping function, etc…
– Great support with forum, FAQ and personalized help if you need it
All in all I am extremely happy with Semiologic and would highly recommend it to anyone who is serious intentions for their own WordPress blog. After all, you want your time spent generating content and marketing your blog NOT trying to figure out how to make it work.
Take a look for yourself – you can learn more here
Jeff
