Blog (or other content) solution for existing website

I would like to create a blog or other media repository on a website which I do not have direct control over (the website is owned by my employer but managed by a third party). I can get them to do whatever I want so long as it’s free (or cheap).

I don’t need anything fancy, but I do need something that - once installed - I can fully manage and post to without needing to go through the third party.

Any suggestions? Is WordPress still the gold standard? Was it ever?

I have no overwhelming complaing about WordPress, although I don’t care for what it does to formatting in blog posts by default. But after using it since 2014 in parallel with LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, and (until Dec 2020) Google’s Blogger, I also don’t see a single advantage of WordPress over any of the others (except Blogger, which is a bit of a trainwreck).

If your goal is strictly for internal purposes (you want your coworkers to have a space in which to read and reply to content; you aren’t trying to lure in external people to become regular readers of your corporate blog), then WordPress is fine but nothing special.

They do have a lot of bells and whistles if you intend to pay for your WP account. I don’t, mine is the baseline free account.

If your employer really owns the website (has access to the server), then installing WordPress is a great way to go. (this would not be the same as WordPress.com). You would have complete control (once installed), and can post and add all kinds of feature (or keep it simple and not fancy anything up). The installation is dead simple.

The only real warning would be to make sure to keep auto-updates turned on. WordPress (because it’s so widely used) is subject to a lot of attacks, and keeping updated keeps you safe.

My oldest WordPress project has been running smoothly since 2008, and currently has 6,591 sites and 9,601 users. My most effective WordPress project had 50 million page views in 2021, with over 500 contributors. And neither of these is my full-time job.

But you can also do a simple personal site with almost no time invested to set it up or maintain it–just as much time as you want/need to produce content.

WordPress is really a fantastic publishing platform, in my experience, for all levels of users.

This page

has Wordpress way up there, but many additional free-and-open-source systems are listed here