I've heard something similar a dozen times, sometimes even a WordPress expert will say this. "WordPress is just a choice, like any other website platform." 

That is wrong and inaccurate. And in this video I tell you why. I have worked with WordPress since 2004. I have also worked with dozens of other website and content platforms. Sharepoint, Joomla, Mambo, Netsuite, Concrete5, Blogger, Medium, Wix, Squarespace, Drupal, Shopify.

The Main Reason WordPress is Better

Video Timecodes

0:00 Why talk about this
0:40 Inaccurate comparisons
1:25 Analogy to car buying
2:20 WordPress in a class of its own
2:57 WordPress' DNA is world-changing
4:30 Free and Open Source
6:40 Turn it into a profitable site
7:30 WordPress resources are available
8:45 A matter of function
9:12 Principle, functionality, freedom.

Video Transcript

Video transcript and closed captioning for the video provided by Otter.ai

Hey guys, what's up Oscar here for Notagrouch, Notagrouch dot com go visit, go check it out, click like, subscribe, all that good stuff. And Whoa! They're making big changes here. I just drove by a Trader Joe's they're remodeling.

So in any case, I want to talk to you a little bit about WordPress yet again, what a surprise, right? So the reason I want to talk to you about it is because some people say, Well, isn't, isn't this better? And isn't this better how come these people use this. And that's really just... it's a normal question I get all the time. The analogy someone said... I was in a conversation and one person said, "Well, why can I just use this" or "why can I just use that?"

I mentioned names a minute but the other person said something that is completely inaccurate. And I want to make sure that if you hear this you know that that person is doesn't know what they're talking about at all. The person said, "Oh, you know, it's just a matter of preference. It's like, when you go buy a car, some people like to buy a Toyota Camry and other people like to buy a Honda Accord."

And that's absolutely not the case. using WordPress versus other systems is not just a matter of choice. There are so many different layers of why WordPress is better, that it doesn't really compare in that way.

For example, some you know, if you go get a Honda, or Toyota or, you know, if you're looking between, say a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry, the two most popular cars for each of those brands, you are going to get more or less the same thing, just different brands, slightly different features. The buttons are going to look different, where the shifting gear is maybe different. Maybe one has a little bit of technology that the other one doesn't have and things like that.

At the end of the day, it's a vehicle that sits five people that takes you from A to B, with really good gas mileage, really good reliability, outstanding warranty support all that stuff. Price may be a little bit different, but they're in the same class.

WordPress is in a class of its own, because it is both free, but also profitable. If you run a website with WordPress, you can make a profit. And it's not WordPress that does it is what you do with it. If you run a website with, say, Blogger, your profits are going to be very, very hard to find. It's just very hard to get a Blogger website to last a long time and also be profitable. They're great for some things, but not as flexible as WordPress. There's also the principle of how WordPress is built that makes us so important. WordPress has changed the world. Some of the other things like Shopify...

take Shopify, for example, Shopify is a good example of a very specific purpose. Shopify does e commerce. And you can do e commerce in a matter of minutes. You can be up and running, and you're ready to go.

But if you want to deviate from that just a little bit you can't. Is difficult. If you want to add custom code, you're going to find it's very expensive to find a good developer that will do not only what you need, but that will do it right. It's also it also costs money up front you have to have, you have to be paid for it right away on a monthly basis, ongoing, whether you're selling your stuff or not. I've seen so many people have a great idea to sell a product. "So I just start a Shopify store" and they start a Shopify store and three months later, they quit because they haven't made money and they paying into their monthly fee.

And they give up. There's nothing wrong with Shopify, there's nothing wrong with Blogger. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Well, I mean, there are some things wrong with some platforms. But for the most part, all of them have their strengths and their weaknesses. WordPress included. But the reason why you use WordPress, for me, from my perspective is because it's free, free beer like free beer, you download it, and now it's yours. You can use it, do whatever you want with it. It's also free and open source, which is critical. Open Source is one of the most important things that people don't know or understand.

Open Source is the idea that you can look at the code of the software that you're using for review or modification. And you can make modifications with that restriction that is crucial to humanity as a whole. Other big open source projects that you may know about and not realize they're Open Source, are Firefox, the underlying operating system for Mac, you know, OS X is built around open source. Windows is now doing a lot of open source stuff.

And the reason why that's so important is because it prevents people from doing malicious stuff with your code from taking over and doing a tech monopoly, like, you see Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all those people have a hold on their audience. And you don't really know what's going on. You don't know how the algorithm works. You don't know how the code works. You don't know if the code is tracking you. How far is tracking you what the extent of it is tracking you and all those things.

That's because it's a closed source. Open Source means you can review the code, you can change it you can say, Oh, you know what, I don't want this piece of code here. You can remove it. Of course, you have to have the ability to do that. But any PHP developer can do that. PHP is a language in which most of WordPress is written. Now they're introducing a lot of other stuff. But it's still open source. You can go and read the code, understand what it does modify it, you can build a new edition for it and say I want WordPress to do this this way.

And you do it without asking anybody for permission, you simply just do it. And that is what is so beautiful about WordPress. That is why I recommend WordPress, more than any other piece of software out there in the part that is profitable. That is really up to you just like it is up to you to make Shopify profitable. It is up to you to make WordPress profitable, you can install a plugin named WooCommerce. And you can start running a web shop just like Shopify, maybe even better and it didn't really cost you anything.

You can start putting content out there and put some links to affiliate products and start selling that you could start a website where you collect payments for whatever type of service you offer, the list goes on about all the things that you can do with WordPress. But if you go into Shopify or say Squarespace, now you you're stuck with them, you can't really change a lot of the stuff in there, you don't know how the code works. So you don't know what kind of things you can do to improve that code or to modify it to suit your own needs.

And that is what really gives you a lot of freedom with WordPress that I think is the best thing that you could have. WordPress takes a little bit of learning. But there are so many there are so many resources out there that help you get started, how to post, how to do basically everything. And all you have to do is watch some YouTube videos. When you say "Oh, how do I make a link?" You go to YouTube and say how do I make a link on WordPress? You will find a three minute video on how to do that.

Say "how do I post a picture on WordPress" you go to YouTube and look for that somebody has a video teaching you how to post a picture on YouTube on WordPress, whatever example I can come up with. There is somebody out there that shows your own WordPress. For some of the most advanced things that you can do with WordPress, or maybe I should say sophisticated, like how do I build an affiliate marketing website that may require you to watch a few videos, or even buy a training course that tells you how to do that.

So it all depends what you want to do, but the knowledge is out there for you to just use it. With Shopify, they may or may not have a knowledge base, or they want you to do things certain way, not necessarily the best way for you. So the analogies are not the same. It's more like saying, oh, the difference between WordPress and all this other platforms. It's not just a matter of preference, it's a matter of function.

It would be more like saying It's like buying a Honda versus buying an 18-wheeler. Yeah, they both take you around and they both take fuel have wheels to move, but they're not the same. So don't let people tell you that is just a matter of choice. No, it's a matter of principle. It's a matter of functionality. It's a matter of freedom. It's matter of a lot more than just a choice. So, consider WordPress next time you use this and as I mentioned before, use wordpress.org not wordpress.com.

Talk to you guys later. Bye.

The post WordPress is Better Than Other Platforms appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I did a live training session recently for a client, but I decided to do it as a live video on Facebook. It really was just me showing you how to craft the perfect blog post.

The main topics I covered were:

• Using Elementor to build a blog post.
• Content layout and making content visitor friendly.
• Image placement, single images, and gallery.
• Video embedding with Elementor.
• Featured image.

Video Notes

The video starts around the 5:00 minute mark. Prior to that is just me getting ready for the broadcast.

The tool I'm using is Elementor. Highly recommend you check it out, it's free but I'm showcasing the paid version. Check out Elementor here (that's my affiliate link).

The transcription for the video is being processed. I'll post it here as soon as it's ready.

The post Video: Crafting the Perfect Blogpost with WordPress + Elementor appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

When I build people's websites I often hear what the previous "wordpress person" told them... Everyone tells you something like this: It's WordPress, so it's easy to use. Anyone can do it!. That followed by the wink and a smile. The truth is that most people (maybe you too), don't like dealing with this stuff. It may be easy for them to do it because they do it all day long for many websites. But for you as a business owner, you don't need that added pressure.

So here's another simple video for your new free WordPress site. This is how to update plugins. It's simple but useful.

The post Updating Plugins on your Free Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you have trouble watching it on my website, here is the direct link on youtube.

Back to the Free WordPress Setup Guide

The post How to Log-in to your New Free WordPress Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post How to Update Plugins and Themes on WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post How to Curate Content with WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Lots of people start blogging at WordPress.com. WordPress.com is easy to use, you can get started quickly and it's free.

Other benefits include the built-in community that exposes your blog to millions of potential readers and a technical benefit is that WordPress.com is robust and reliable.

Your blog there will probably never go down. If it goes down, there are some major problems going on and you can rest assured that someone is working on it, double-time.

But then there is WordPress.org the Open Source version. This is the WordPress that you can install on your own server or on a hosting account that you buy from a hosting provider.

Hosting your own WordPress website comes with its own list of benefits. More control, no restrictions, and the ability to do pretty much whatever you want with your blog or website. This is the best choice for many people that want more control than WordPress.com allows.

Practical examples of having more control are

• The ability to run your own ads or ad network.
• The ability to charge for special access to restricted content. Courses, private support, product downloads or sales.
• The ability to customize it and build any functionality you can imagine.
• Building your own photo gallery
• Building your own ecommerce store
• Building your own social media platform

It's awesome to have the WordPress.org website instead of just WordPress.com -- don't get me wrong, I have several WordPress.com blogs too. I use them to support other efforts. I can talk about that later if you're interested.

So what happens if you start out in WordPress.com and then later you want to move to WordPress.org? Moving is relatively easy.

Updated for 2015. I updated the entire post with some new information and finally answered the most asked question. What host do you recommend? I answer is at the end of the document so it doesn't get in your way of the instructions. But if you want to know right away, just scroll down until you see: Webhosting Recommendations.

If you don't have a custom domain already, you'll need to buy one. But if you already have one, you can transfer it over.

Once you have a hosting account and your new domain, then you can move over your WordPress.com blog into your new hosting account and start showing your website under your own domain.

The following video shows you how to do it.

In this video I show you the mechanics of exporting your blog posts from WordPress.com and then importing them into a brand new installation of WordPress.org in a webhosting account (there's that 50/50 link again!)

The post Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (video tutorial) appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.