Wordpress installation

Over the weekend I've been playing around with Wordpress, having set up a blog over at wordpress.com, where you can set up a blog spectacularly quickly (as you can over with Google's blogger.com).  As a fairly experienced Joomla! user, I found the hosted blog slightly restrictive (for example I would have to pay a daily rate of $0.04 just to be able to edit the theme's css file).

I ended up doing a test installaion on my notebook, firstly using a dedicated database, then trying out incorporating its database within my main Joomla! database.  It turns out to be pretty straightforward to migrate content (though I imagine one would exceed the import limit quite quickly on an active blog).

The installation process is spectacularly straightforward if you have a bit of experience in dealing with MySQL databases.  The software is a modest download, and the installation really does take only five minutes!  I suppose this comes from the more restricted feature set.  The admin side of Wordpress seems pretty intuitive to me.  Perhaps Wordpress is the Mac of the blogosphere - pretty, intuitive, slightly restricted toolset, while Joomla! is the Linux dude of the blogosphere - highly tunable, expandable, flexible, but at times less than intuitive.  It will be quite interesting to see how Wordpress compares with the software I'm using on this Joomla! site (MyBlog partnered with JomComment).

For what it's worth, my intention had been to set up a satellite blog dealing with atheism, and particularly focussing on longer pieces, though publishing less frequently than I do here.  It's now online and accessible via the header menu of this page, with one brief article and three in the works.  Watch this space!