WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

WordPress logoYou finally decided to start a blog. Great! And you have chosen WordPress as the platform. That’s even greater! WordPress is a very powerful tool, that even not so techies people are able to use it in matter of minutes.

Do you know that WordPress comes in 2 versions? Don’t get confused. WordPress.com is different to WordPress.org in a couple of definite ways. Here are the explanations.

In general, both WordPress are handled by Automattic Inc., a company dedicated to make web a better place. The differences lie on the features and WordPress.com offers the platform, domain name and hosting for free. All you have to do is signup for a free account, choose your sub-domain and you are on your way. Unlike WordPress.org, it offers free platform but you have to purchase your own domain name as well as hosting. Pretty clear, huh?

WordPress.org is open source blogging software that is freely available to anyone to download. The software must be installed on a web server that is set up to serve web pages over the internet. You have to own a web server or rent some space on one. That’s called hosting and it’s not usually free. There are plenty of good hosts out there who will let you install WordPress on their web servers for a reasonable fee. You can then do anything you like with your own copy of WordPress: install plugins and themes, etc.

WordPress.com is a web site that provides blogs hosted free of charge. The software on WordPress.com is very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It is a multi-user version of WordPress that allows many thousands of blogs to be hosted on a single web server. The free blog hosting does not come with the ability to upload plugins or themes. Because any change in the software affects every blog on the system, some of the things you can do on your own hosted WordPress blog are disabled.

Depending on your long term goal, choosing between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is crucial. My personal note, go for WordPress.org if you needs meet these criteria:

  • Monetization: Wordpress.com does not allow you to include advertisements of any kind.
  • Customization: WordPress.org doesn’t limit your amount of space and customization options. Unlike WordPress.com which is very limited.
  • Knowledge: Wordpress.org requires more technical knowledge than Wordpress.com.
  • Future Requirements: If your blog becomes popular, switching to Wordpress.org requires moving your blog and obtaining a new domain name and URL address, which probably affected your blog in so many ways.
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Posted on: June 2, 2008 | Under General 
 

One Response to “WordPress.com vs WordPress.org”

  1. cekka on June 8th, 2008 2:10 pm

    Hey dude..
    I’ve done a research a little bit. And i found a lots of local hosting provider. See my recent posts..

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