WordPress

Due to its ease of use and range of services, WordPress has rapidly developed into one of the premier blogging platforms on the planet. It's used on everywhere from free to hosted sites, and it's used for a wide variety of online services, but as more competition starts to surface, it's not necessarily the ideal match for everyone. But WordPress' developed have been making substantive efforts to be everything for everyone, and they've largely succeeded in that task. The modern WordPress platform is more than just a means to get your blog published. It also folds in commerce and integration with a variety of different third party platforms while also providing responsive designs that adapt to a variety of different screen types and sizes. The result is a pretty impressive content management platform that can scale to the needs of everyone from amateurs to professional developers and designers.

The main limitations of the WordPress system aren't necessarily flaws. Their lack of a truly comprehensive drag and drop interface means that they're less friendly to brand new users than many of their alternatives, and they don't work as a complete and inclusive site-building platform. But one could argue that WordPress was never meant to be those things, and what they do, they do well. WordPress is available as both a full-hosted and a self-hosted platform, and the solution that's right for you will come down to how much you're willing to pay and how much you expect from the service. The latter gives you full control over your website but also puts the responsibilities of publishing and finding your own host in your hands, while the former comes at a cost but also deals with a lot of the technical aspects that come with hosting a website or traditional blog.

One of the greatest strengths of WordPress is how much adoption there's been for the platform. The amount of people using WordPress is huge, and while it can be more complicated than a more traditional WYSIWYG platform, this installed user base can ease the learning curve greatly. Once you get over the first hump of learning the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you'll find a wealth of resources to help you put together your website. Even better, WordPress is truly laden with third party integrations and home made mods that allow you to improve the look of your site without worrying about learning complex code blocks. In addition to these plugins, a number of different themes are available.

If you're looking for a website builder that splits the difference between simplified WYSIWYG and coding by hand, WordPress is a sensible choice. The combination of great community support and flexible design splits the difference between the poles. Just keep in mind, putting together a solid design is going to require a bit of research.