WordPress Wednesday:: WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

Today is the first installment of WordPress Wednesday.

The first few posts will be pretty basic…so hang in there with me. I promise I’ll get to the good stuff! Thanks to those that left comments last week with some questions. I’m definitely planning to address some of them in the near future.

But, today I wanted to talk a little bit about WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.

Some of you may or may not have known that there were 2 different WordPress options. I personally didn’t when I was first considering making the switch from Blogger. But there are and it’s important to know the difference to decide which option is best for you.

Let’s start with WordPress.com. WordPress.com is your basic free online blog platform.

Benefits::

-Quick and easy setup

-Pick from a list of available themes

-Backups on your blog are done automatically

-Hosting is free

-Low risk of ‘breaking’ your blog

Downside::

-Don’t have the ability to truly customize your site or install plugins {I’ll explain plugins later}

-Can’t host/show your own ads on your site

-Don’t ‘own’ your site {i.e. if WordPress decided to take your blog down, they could…that’s HIGHLY unlikely though, but they would have the right}

With WordPress.com your domain name will automatically be yourname.wordpress.com. If you wish to have your own domain name, then you can pay $12 per year plus the cost of your domain. I have heard though if you decide to go from yourname.wordpress.com to yourname.com that switching actually hurts your search engine rankings. So keep that in mind when deciding which route to go.

WordPress.org on the other hand has more functionality but isn’t free.

Benefits::

-Able to completely customize how your site looks with custom themes

-Can install plugins to help with the look and functionality of your site

- Can install ads for personal monetization {i.e. Adsense or affiliate programs}

-Have complete control and ownership of your site

Downside::

-Have to pay to host your site {I’ll explain that later as well}

-Have to buy your own domain name

-Must regularly update/back up your site

-Likelihood of ‘breaking’ your blog is higher

As you can see, there are benefits and downsides to each. It really just depends on what your goal for your blog is. If you are strictly blogging for a hobby and have no wish to grow it, then WordPress.com probably makes the most sense. If you do wish to have ads one day on your site or make a ‘business’ out of your blog in some way, then I would strongly suggest going with WordPress.org from the start.

Since I have WordPress.org, the majority of my WordPress Wednesday posts will pertain to that platform. However, some of the things I’ll share can be used on both. Stay tuned for more WordPress lessons…

Did you know there were two different ‘kinds’ of WordPress? If you still have any specific WordPress questions that you would like for me to address, feel free to leave them in the comments!

Check out these additional WordPress Wednesday posts::

-Securing a domain name

-Hosting

-Setting up your header and navigation bar

-Setting up your sidebar

-Creating a favicon

-Sidebar Plugins

-Installing Facebook like box and Instagram widget

-Installing Social Sharing bar

-How to add a ‘Pin It’ button to posts

-How to generate related post thumbnails

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