WordPress is probably the most elegant and professional blogging platform out there. If you want to get started in blogging, you really can't make a much better choice.
Although it was overshadowed for many years by Google's Blogger, WordPress has now become much more user friendly and offers far more customization, publishing control and just plain good looks than the former does.
WordPress is very much a community driven project with many of the thousands of themes available developed by enthusiastic users. The community support forums are superb and with each release, WordPress has got better and better.
To setup your own WordPress blog, you'll need a server to upload WordPress to. Alternatively, you can use Wordpress.com's own hosted blogging service which does all the hard work for you without the need for your own server. However, doing it this way doesn't give you as much control over your blog - you can't use Google ads on a WordPress.com hosted blog for example.
Everything you do in WordPress is done via the Dashboard which is intuitively laid out. From here you can change themes, edit and manage comments and of course, write blog posts. Adding multimedia content is made a breeze thanks to YouTube integration which simply requires you to enter the link of your video to embed it in your blog. The only problems you might have is when embedding video from lesser known video sites and media outlets as WordPress can be quite fussy when it comes to video.
One of WordPress's strongest features is the ability to add plugins. These range from the bullet proof Akismet spam filter to stop your blog collecting spam comments to comment subscriptions and stat tracking plug-ins.
WordPress really has it all. If you want to get serious about blogging, then it's the perfect start.
