Webware 100 winner: WordPress.com (with WordPress platform)

Site: WordPress.com / WordPress.org
Category: Social & Publishing

WordPress is a free blogging platform available to everyone. WordPress has two components, one is a free, Web-based blog-hosting service called WordPress.com. The other is WordPress.org, which provides users with software to run a more feature-rich version of the blogging tool on their own servers.

Both services offer a very easy way to blog, with administrative options to work collaboratively on one or several blogs using the same log-in. Bloggers can write their posts in a WYSIWYG editor, or switch over to a code view on the fly.

The service is best known for its community-created themes and plug-ins. A blog owner running WordPress on his or her own server can download these and deploy changes to the blog site instantly. WordPress.com users are limited to a smaller selection of these themes and features that come from the plug-ins, although many trickle down to WordPress.com, and can also be purchased as premium features.