July 20, 2013 E3

Web Design with WordPress 101 – WordPress.com v. WordPress.org

Welcome back everyone to the Web Design with WordPress 101 course.

Before we continue on to the actual course material I think it’s important to point out a distinction between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. You may have already noticed the two websites if you’ve done any searching on the web. The difference between the two is this: WordPress.com is a hosted blogging service which is used mostly for creating blogs. WordPress.org provides a download of the WordPress software that has to be manually installed on your own web server or a web host of your choice.  Today’s class will explore the difference between the two options.

Both sites are owned by the same parent company, Automattic, and both sites offer access to the same software, but there are certain advantages to using one over the other. This course will apply mainly to the self-hosted variety of WordPress found at WordPress.org. However, I will briefly point out some of the advantages and disadvantages of each choice. It’s also important to note that regardless of which option you chose now, you can transfer your work from the server on WordPress.com to your own private server, or vice versa later on down the road.

Let’s start by exploring WordPress.com. This option provides free hosting for your website with the WordPress software preinstalled on their servers. It is the easier of the two options and is ideal for bloggers and those with limited technical expertise. You can also sign up for their basic account free of charge. There are several premium options that the site offers that may be of interest to you depending on the type of site you wish to create. Check out the store link to see more information about the services they offer and the costs associated with each service.

In addition to its ease of use WordPress.com also brings the added benefit of having Automattic maintain the servers where your web content will be stored. You’ll only be responsible for providing the content of your site while the maintenance of the web servers and various software applications needed to keep your site up and running will be handled by Automattic. This does, however, have certain drawbacks.

Automattic limits the content that users can post on their website as part of their terms of service. If you don’t plan on publishing any obscene or incendiary material you’ll probably be ok with agreeing to their terms. If you do, however, take issue with certain restrictions they place on content you may want to consider hosting your own web server or utilizing a web host where your content is allowed. Automattic will disable your page if they find you are violating their terms of service so I recommend reading over their terms of service before setting up your blog.

In addition to the content restrictions at WordPress.com there are also certain limitations on the extent to which you can customize your website. For example, WordPress utilizes web site design templates known as “themes” which help differentiate your site from others. WordPress.com only allows users to select the themes that they make available to its users. Although there are an abundance of theme choices available on their site, which include some premium theme choices, you will not be able to import themes from other sources or even create your own themes for use with your website.

WordPress.com also doesn’t support plugins for your website. A plugin is a small program that you can add to your website that gives the page some new feature that WordPress didn’t offer on its own. Think of WordPress.com as your smart phone. It comes with a bunch of apps preinstalled that allow you to take advantage of your phone in a bunch of different ways, but it doesn’t come with everything. Enter the app store, a place where you can find apps that do any number of things that help your phone do something it couldn’t  do out of the box. A plugin is like an app from the app store. It brings something new to your website that wasn’t originally there when you first started the site.
Although WordPress.com provides some basic features, similar to the preinstalled apps on your smart phone, there is no “app store” for WordPress.com. You are stuck with the features they give you access to through their website.

Another consideration is that you will not be able to advertise on your page when using WordPress.com. If you intend to utilize your page to generate some kind of ad revenue, then WordPress.com may not be the appropriate choice for you…

Comment (1)

  1. Drupal is one of these effective software packages that helps people and businesses publish
    content on their websites. People, who are planning to use their own software, they must not choose this hosting service.

    There are thousands of web-hosting service providers and all of them claim to be the best.

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