There are a lot of bloggers out there who do not use WordPress, well all I can say is you guys do not know what you are missing. It is definitely, in my opinion, the best FREE blogging platform that I know of. They have just updated the program and have called it  WordPress 2.1 “Ella”, named for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. This version comes jammed packed with new add ons including.

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now loads instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

I’ve copied that list right from their site, so I am not making it up. The auto save feature is the best. How often have you almost completed a blog when your computer froze causing you to lose everything? While we are at it why don’t we admit that hardly any of us use the “save and continue editing” feature. Well this auto save feature has already saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

Let us not forget all the ad-ons including site-map generators (google loves these), the ability to add your own store as well as heaps of themes. I know I’m starting to rave so I will give it a rest. Back to blogging for money.