WordPress.com or WordPress.org? WordPress.com refers to wordpress hosted sites while wordpress.org are self hosted site. What is the difference? As usual, I’ll present it in the usual gangnam Azare style i.e. a table. When it comes to formatting webpages, html table is my first choice. Formatting tables in wordpress is a bit different from normal html. If you want to know how to draw a borderless table, read my aha-moment-borderless-table-in-wordpress-com-post
| WordPress.com | WordPress.org | |
| Cost | Generally free. As in hosting is free. If you don’t like yourchoseofname.wordpress.com domain name, WordPress.com provides domain name purchase. And you can premium theme from wordpress.com too. | Everything is at your own cost. Domain and hosting purchase. As well as purchase of essentials plugins for anti-spam, backup, SEO, etc. |
| Monetization | WordAds but only sites with custom domains and “moderate to high traffic and appropriate content” are eligible to apply. Affiliate links is also not allowed. | No restriction to make money. Advertising, selling products, affliate links. Plugins available to make it easy to add the functionality. For example, WPZon makes it easy to populate a blog post with keyword targeted Amazon products. |
| Customization | Minimal customization. Can’t upload anything to the server. So in terms of themes and plugins, restricted to what is offered by wordpress.com. And customization to these themes are relatively limited as well. As mention, wordpress.com offers premium theme. No 3rd party plugins allowed. | Complete control of your site. Install themes, widgets and plugins as desired. Take extreme care though. Possible exposure to viruses, hacks, exploits, malware, spyware. If that is not enough, there could be incompatabilities. |
| Knowledge | Suitable for technically challenged people. Setup with just a few clicks. And you concentrate on content. Write post, pages, add tags and categorize it. Don’t need to bother about technical stuff like spam protection, backups, updates, security, spam-protection, etc. These are all automatically handled. | Needs quite a fair bit technical skills. If hosting does not provide one script install, setting up may require require manual database creation and file upload. You are on you own when it comes to spam protection, backups, updates, security. |
Which is suitable for you? Well it all lies on your needs. For a beginner, I think it’s good to start to with wordpress.com. Familiarize and get a feel of the admin tool, build up a collection of content and then thing about moving to self hosting. That’s what i’m doing.
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