Blog Design Tools:  

While WordPress is designed to be simple enough for non–coders, WordPress does allow you to customize templates. There are many open source templates out there for you to choose from, or if you like (and you have knowledge of CSS) you can alter your own to fit your needs. If you'd prefer to stick to standard WordPress templates, you still have dozens to choose from, so you won't be limited in designing your blog. You can customize the templates with your own header image, font color, sidebar widgets, plugins and more.

The posting box is easy to use and can be used in either text or HTML mode. The standard text box operates a lot like a word processor with similar controls. For instance, there are buttons and fields that allow you to change fonts, increase font size, bold text, change text colors and many other standard formatting options. The WordPress posting box also has a spell check and a preview. You can easily add links and images, however images are added by URL, so if you are using your own image you have to upload it and use the WordPress assigned URL. Fortunately, the photo uploader is fairly simple to use and offers you several different options about how the picture will appear on the blog (size, orientation, etc.).

Obviously, the HTML-based posting box is for people who both know HTML and prefer more exact control over their content. The WordPress apps fully support embedding video and music players in your blog by simply copying the embed code into the HTML viewing pane.

Another benefit of using WordPress is the wide variety of plugins and widgets that you can use on your blog. WordPress is very popular so there have been a lot of people who have created additional plugins to increase functionality. Some of them are designed to show up on your blog page, like blogrolls, photo slideshows and link lists, to small programs that increase functionality in the WordPress apps, like automatically sending new posts to Twitter, adding music to your blog or improving tag and keyword usage.

As you can see, WordPress does a good job of catering to people that need simplicity as well as those that prefer options and functionality.