Wordpress

I am reviewing the textbook Wordpress For Dummies 5th edition by Lisa Sabin-Wilson et al which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . This book is co authored by Matt Mullwegin the owner of Wordpress who also has his own blog on the hosted version. It can be accessed through the Wordpress home page. I have read several earlier versions of this book and there isn't that much new in this book. If you are looking to get started blogging it's ideal but maybe not for more experienced users. When you join Wordpress you can verify who you are by other sites you are a member of. Of course all the major ones like Twitter & Linkedin are there but also a couple I'd never heard of which are TripIt & FriendFeed. This book also mentions a social bookmark site I'd never heard of called SocialMention. A couple of interesting plugins are Gallery for photo's & Videopress for video's. Normally you have to upgrade your account to display video. Among the self hosted options are http://wordpress.org for a self hosted single blog & http://wordpressmu.org for the multi blog account self hosted version. Both versions are free but you have to pay a third party to host them. Of course if you want to run a business website you can't have any kind of e-commerce on the hosted version. You risk losing your account with Wordpress if you do. I did really enjoy reading this book and it's got a top ten plug ins and themes near the end of the book which is quite interesting.