WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms online. Not only can you set up a blog, but you can also make your blog look like a website by adding more pages.

When setting up a blog with WordPress you have many options: you can choose to have your site hosted for free, and you also get a free sub-domain, or you can get your own domain, and upgrade to a premium account with WordPress. You can also download their software and host it on your own hosting account.

They provide you with step-by-step tutorials on how to download, and then re-upload the software to your hosting account. There is also a forum on WordPress where you can go and ask questions any time you need help with the installation, or you can go there just to chat.

To get started, simply go to wordpress.com and sign up. Pick a URL, name your blog and you are all set to go.

WordPress has over 70 theme templates which you can choose from to make your blog unique. You can also upload your own banner, and change colors.

You are also provided with many widgets to help you make your site user friendly, like blog subscriptions, which allows your readers to enter in their email addresses and subscribe to your blog.

You can also neatly organize your work into categories and display them along the side bar.

Add more pages to make it look more like a website.

Social media widgets include twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr, and photobucket.

Display your most recent posts, or hottest posts.

Akismet is a widget which blocks spam comments from being submitted to your site.

You can add a calendar, an RSS feed, a links bar, embed videos from YouTube, and Hulu.

On top of that you can also import content from other blogs like Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal, Type, or another WordPress blog if you like.

One great thing about WordPress is that you can have multiple users which can have access to one account. With the free version of WordPress you can have up to 35, and with the Premium you can have an unlimited number of people accessing one account. This is great if you are a part of an organization where everyone's input is valuable.

If you use Google Webmaster, Yahoo Site Explorer, or Bing, you can add your information in to keep track of the stats for your blog.

The only downfall about WordPress is that they do not allow ads to run on your site, except for their own ads. But with the premium membership you can have the Wordpress ads removed.

With premium membership you can also upload your own videos directly to wordpress.

Even though you cannot advertise on WordPress, it is still a great place to blog and get back links to your main website.