Wordpress

Wordpress is a top notch blogging platform. It's active developers frequently release new versions with multiple improvements and security fixes.

Administration Interface
Wordpress' admin interface is by far the most intuitive of any blogging platform or CMS I've used (i.e. Blogger, Joomla, Drupal and so on). It is a fully featured administrative section, providing ample opportunities for various forms of moderation, media management, plugin control, theming, and so on. The administrative interface itself even supports theming, which is a nice touch; it give those who can't help but meddle with everything one more knob to fiddle with.

Plugins
Wordpress' plugin library is by far the most extensive of any blogging platform or CMS that I've used. There are plugins to alter the basic functioning of the software, add interesting new features and extend existing ones. Do you want scheduled database backups perhaps, advanced caching technologies, in-depth statistics and user monitoring? It's all in there. The only downside is that each additional plugin will use computing resources on your server, so page loads are slower.

Nobody ever said life was easy; get over it.

Themes
In the midst of A Tribe Called Quest's fabulous New York period, they released a charming little ditty, titled What? wherein they pose the following question (paraphrased):

What's Rasheed without Tonya, Tamika?
What's (a blogging platform) without (themes)?
Not a not a not a, not a damn thing

Blogging was just in its infancy when this track was released, but as with many of these minstel's hits, time would tell that truer words are rarely spoken. And never in polite company.

Using a blog with a default theme is the blogging equivalent of wearing last year's culottes. It shouldn't be done. The wordpress community has a very active theming contingent, so no faux-pas-culottery is necessary.

Widgets
When it comes to blogging image is everything. Or it's at least seven tenths of everything: content is important too.

Appearing to be important is more important than being important. It's the old "cleanliness is next to Godliness" routine. Everybody who is everybody has a Flickr, a LinkedIn, a BoogieTootie, a Facebook, a MySpace and a Tumblog and the odd Orkut. It's important to let your blog's readers connect with your multi-faceted web personality. Wordpress facilitates this interaction by providing a bevy of widgets capable of spewing tweets, posting pics and blasting tunes to your audience in the aptly named "sidebar."

Conclusion
A mile is approximately 5800 feet long, but let's say it's 6000. This means that in today's mile-a-minute world, that we are all travelling 100 feet per second. This is approximately 100 times better than travel by horse, an animal which is limited to about 1 foot per second. It stands to reason that there will be a lot more interesting stuff to blog about in 100 feet than in 1 foot, so the horse loses.

Don't let the smell of the horse being rended, turned into glue and sold for meat in exotic markets turn you off... blog about it! Handsome men and bosomy ladies will be your reward, and your throne will be polished daily by anxious commenters hoping for a share of your snarky glory. When you look down upon your followers, just be sure to do so through the best of lenses, wordpress.