Hosted blogging services like Blogger and WordPress.com can be great for teachers who want to quickly create classroom blogs. Through a hosted service you can have a blog up and running in minutes. Hosted services also manage all of the back-end things like software updates that most teachers don’t want to spend time fussing with. But if you blog long enough there may come a time when you want to have more customization options on your blog. That’s when you might turn to self-hosting a WordPress blog. In fact, that’s what I’m doing with iPad Apps for School, Android 4 Schools, and Practical Ed Tech.

When I started self-hosting WordPress blogs I learned a lot by trial and error. I also learned a ton from consulting WPBeginner. WPBeginner offer free video and written tutorials for all of the basics and then some. On WP Beginner you can find everything from how to change your default font size to the pros and cons of theme frameworks to how to create a forum within your WordPress blog.

Applications for Education
If you’ve been looking to take your classroom blog to the next level by including a classroom discussion forum within it or by creating better-looking portfolio pages, WPBeginner is a good resource to keep bookmarked.