WordPress.org enables you to invest in your own brand, your own online address and your own links or you can invest in WordPress.com’s online address and domain extension.
Which platform should you choose?
This Video Is Part Of The WordPress Video Tutorials for Beginners.
If you own a website and are thinking about a blog, consider a WordPress powered blog. The software is used by over 50 million blogs and you have two options to choose from.
- Free hosted – WordPress.com is hosted free by wordpress using an extension of their domain, however, it does have many limitations as it is also controlled by wordpress.com which is a commercial enterprise
- Self hosted – WordPress.org is free software that you can install to your own unique domain name and web host without any limitations. You have total control and can use the free software anyway you desire.
If you already understand a little about wordpress because you have a free hosted blog then consider the benefits of owning your own web site using the free software from WordPress.org.
WordPress.org Benefits
- Ability to upload and change themes
- Customize your site into your own unique brand
- Ability to upload plugins (Over 12,000)
- Use your own domain name
- Optimize your content and build links for better search engine results
- Build your subscribers by adding email marketing web forms
- Complete control to change add code/scripts to increase site functions
Consider this: Free of charge, WordPress.org provides the blog software which you fully control therefore are free to customize and configure to your own requirements.
WordPress.org also provide a huge range of free themes and plugins which enable you to easily add different styling, features and functions to your own wordpress site. They even offer community support forums and technical documentation to assist you with anything related to wordpress.
Once you have installed the free WordPress.org software, you can also offer different types of advertisements and easily moneterize your site any way you like.
Everyone is free to download the software, free of charge, however it must be installed on a web server before it will work. Web servers are not normally free, however, they are not expensive considering the potential your own hosted site offers you.
WordPress.org Cons
- You need a good web host, which generally costs $7 a month for a shared hosting package.
- Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run however good web hosts now offer a one click install
- You’re responsible for stopping spam – however wordpress provide an excellent free anti spam plugin called akismet
- You have to handle backups
- If you get a huge spike in traffic (from Digg or twitter) your site may go down (half your luck!)
Ready to get started? Download WordPress 3.1
WordPress.com uses the same software however it differs for many reasons.
- You do not have to download and install the software
- You do not have to pay for your own web hosting
- You do not have control or access to the databases, core framework
- You cannot upload plugins to add your own custom features
- You cannot add or change CSS code for styling your own site
- You cannot add or edit PHP code to change the functions of your site in anyway
WordPress.com is free for you to blog without any responsibilities. On the other hand, free comes with a price. You have no control.
My experience with WordPress started when i opened an account with WordPress.com and learn’t how to blog.
It didn’t take long to realize i needed full control of my wordpress site and the only way to achieve this was to transfer to my own domain name with my own web host using the free WordPress.org software.
I have also decided to keep my own free hosted blog as well, in order to submit a combination of links from my all my blogs.
This consolidates all my blog posts on different subjects to the one blog so my readers can also see what else i blog about which also builds one way backlinks to my own self hosted sites and increases my traffic.
Brad Dalton
@wpsitesdotnet
Latest posts by Brad Dalton (see all)
- Add Featured Image Thumbnail From Post To RSS Feed - May 25, 2013
- Remove Comments From Specific Posts and Different Categories - May 24, 2013
- Add Multiple Sliders In Header On Different Pages - May 23, 2013
