WordPress popular among top blogs

WordPress is a particularly popular blogging platform for the top 100 blogs as rated by Technorati, according to new figures from Royal Pingdom.

Over a quarter of the top self-hosted blogs were found to use WordPress, with five using full WordPress hosting.

According to Patricio Robles of Econsultancy, some of the main advantages of using WordPress include its wide variety of features, the availability of a host of themes and plug-ins, an extensive developer community, good spam filtering and the fact that it is open source.

Mr Robles said Royal Pingdom's figures can offer an insight into the blogging platform sector for those weighing up the advantages and disadvantage of self-hosting a blog.

He explained that there is "no substitute" to in-house blog hosting if the company in question wants a customisable and scalable service.

"Self-hosting is an ideal option for those with technical resources but professional third-party hosting options are available to take away some of the headaches of self-hosting for those who aren't techies," Mr Robles added.

The most recent version of WordPress - 2.7 - was launched in December 2008, with work already starting on the next incarnation of the platform.