How to find out which WordPress is right for you

I only work with WordPress. I started out with Blogger many moons ago, but once I had found out about WordPress I was so impressed there was no turning back.

So which one is right for you – WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

Actually I think both are really great, as they each have fine qualities to recommend, but as always there are rules and restrictions to abide by.

WordPress.com

This is the free version WordPress gives you with their own hosting, so you can set up a blog in minutes for no cost. Don’t be misled that this is a second-rate alternative, WordPress have put a lot of effort into their free blog option over the years and they provide a lot of search engine clout combined with their blogging community to gain quite substantial traffic and page ranking.

Changing looks

There also is a lot of facilities, applications and gadgetry available. Over the past decade I have been using WordPress.com I have noticed all the different things that are provided, such as an ever-changing and improving selection of themes (templates) to choose from, half of which are free and many have been adapted to include multiple sidebars, footers and other editable areas.

These themes are easily adaptable to include your own header banners, backgrounds and colours, and you can opt to pay for a premium theme or the ability to change the CSS of a theme if you are technically inclined. Sidebars are activated as soon as widgets are placed in them, and there is the facility to hide and show widgets on specific sidebars, pages, categories and archival pages to make your blog more user-friendly.

Wonderful widgets

The amount of widgets available is always increasing, and I’m always fascinated whenever I go in to see some new and useful additions to the widget gallery that can easily be dragged into the sidebars and tried out, such as your About.Me profile, subscription sign-up, contact details, custom menu, Eventbrite calendar, Facebook Like Box, gallery, blogroll, a countdown, your blogging community, a Twitter timeline and many more.

And of course during December there is the seasonal fun option for falling snow on your blog which can be activated through the Settings. And if you are updating your blog from a touch-screen device, Markdown has been activated so you can enhance your text through appropriate punctuation.

Mind the gap

But not everything is rosy. Since these blogs are hosted by WordPress, therefore you need to abide by their rules. They will not allow you to display adverts on them, but will still activate their own if your blog becomes popular enough, and if you want these removed you have to pay a premium. And you are not supposed to add your own HTML buttons for e-commerce, or the blogging police could shut your blog down without warning.

They do provide you with ample storage space on your blog to accommodate a huge amount of pictures, but space-hungry applications like videos and podcasts can be accommodated by purchasing extra server space. Nevertheless, coded links from applications like YouTube and PodBean.com are acceptable to show videos and podcasts on your posts. And you can ‘map’ your own URL over the WordPress web-address to make the blog look more your own.

WordPress.org

WordPress is actually an open source, which means you can download it for free to place into your hosting account as an application to build a blog or website. A blog can become a website purely by adding static pages and making one of them the homepage, and you can turn off the blog listing page on your WordPress.org website too (though this would be a wasted opportunity SEO-wise).

A WordPress.org blog or website (let’s call it a blogsite to combine the two) requires a domain or web-address and a hosting account. It’s a bit like the domain name being the address of your new house, the host is the plot of land the house is built on, and WordPress is the actual house you build that can be decorated, have extensions put on or include whatever facilities you want.

Make sure it’s compatible

There are lots of different hosting accounts available for web-use, and not necessarily for only WordPress. Any blogging or content management system (CMS) can be uploaded onto a purchased portion of the web, and some make it easier to do than others. This is because the host needs to be compatible, especially for WordPress, through the use of a one-click-install system that eliminates the need to create a MySQL database, configure php files and other similarly horrible transactions.

In the old days uploading WordPress onto your host was a tricky and time-consuming operation, and required quite a bit of technical knowledge to accomplish it properly. I remember it took me two days to fathom it out the first time! But nowadays one-click-installing systems like Fantastico reduces the whole process down to just five minutes! It does what it says on the tin: one click and it’s done! Once the host’s nameservers have been accepted onto the domain’s account, Fantastico has been activated and WordPress uploaded, your blog is ready to go!

It’s all yours

Because you own the domain and hosting account, you can do whatever you like on your WordPress blogsite, such as e-commerce, membership options, advertising, customer relationship marketing (CRM) facilities and digital marketing campaigns. There are literally thousands of themes to choose from that are uploaded into WordPress and which can be adapted to suit your requirements (if you understand code and cascading style sheets or CSS).

WordPress blogsites are not supplied with many widgets and other applications, so these facilities need to be uploaded as plugins from the WordPress.org website (usually free) or from private distributors. Again there are thousands to choose from to make your blogsite do almost anything. Your blogsite will need your diligence and knowledge to enable it to be as efficient and effective as possible, so it is worth doing research to find the necessary plugins that can enhance your blogsite’s performance.

Get monetizing

Because you can do whatever you want on your blogsite (and you’re not subject to the blog police rules), you can adapt it to make you money. Advertising, affiliates and other schemes can be included with impunity, and Google Analytics and other statistic systems can be put in place to measure performance and objective achievements. WordPress.com websites rely on JetPack as its stats indicator, which is a bit limited, whereas Google Analytics and other similar stats-based plugins installed into a WordPress.org blogsite can provide much more information for recording performance purposes.

Marketing campaigns, event planning, product or service selling and other business transactions can be implemented, and when combined with blogging, linking to social media, interaction and engagement from visitors and keyword use for SEO purposes, a blogsite can obtain much loftier search engine results than an ordinary static website.

So which one?

If you are new to blogging then it’s best to cut your teeth on WordPress.com where you can learn the ropes in a secure environment where nothing can go wrong. You don’t need to be technically minded and nearly everything is done for you or easily accessible.

Once you’ve really got to grips with blogging and are ready to move on, the process of taking all your content from your old blog and transferring it over to your new one is very easy. Now you will have a much better understanding of what is possible and which facilities you need to achieve your objectives, and the world is your oyster when it comes to creating your very own bespoke blogsite that does practically anything except make you a cup of tea in the morning!