I chose to write about my WordPress experience at WordPress.com even though I already have my personal website at www. davoraltman .com hosted by GoDaddy. Let me first explain the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
WordPress.com allows you to setup your own blog in a matter of seconds without having to find a suitable hosting provider or buy a domain name. You don’t need to install anything nor have any knowledge about cPanel, FTP, MySQL or anything web related. With just a few clicks, you’ve got your own place on the web so that you can write about anything you wish. WordPress.com does offer lots of premium features, but what an average blogger needs can always be used for free. Thanks, WordPress!
What this means is that your website will become a part of a great WordPress network, where each website is just a child website of a quite large Multisite of WordPress.com. Each user receives his own instance so that he can blog and change the theme according to what he wants. Now, establishing a website couldn’t be more easily done but this approach does have its limitations:
- You cannot modify the theme itself – you don’t have access to it. Some premium themes will allow you to change their CSS, but you cannot change their functionality because you don’t have a direct access to the code
- You cannot install any plugins which are the greatest perk of WordPress.org – plugins extend and modify WordPress functionalities and with them you can completely change how WordPress behaves and turn your website into anything you wish
All in all, WordPress.com is a perfect solution to bloggers but for some advanced websites where you want more control, WordPress.org is the weapon of choice. It does require a bit more technical knowledge but let’s face it, it’s not rocket science! And the upsides are – you get your own WordPress installation, a place at the server of your hosting provider and you can have a complete control over your website. To get a zipped WordPress package which you can install at your place on the web (or at your local machine), click on this link.
I chose to use WordPress.com for writing about my WordPress experience because I wanted to have a complete piece of mind when it comes to security and monitoring of my website and I just wanted to have a place where I can completely focus on the content. And for that reason, I strongly suggest checking WordPress.com!