WordPress.com and WordPress.org

WordPress.com and WordPress.org

WordPress.com is a hosting platform that makes it easy for anyone to publish online. The software is hosted and maintained by the team here at automatic letting you focus on creating awesome content!

WordPress.com is brought to you by some of the same folks who work on wordpress, the open source blogging software that powers millions of websites.

WordPress.com Benefits

·        It’s free and super easy to set up

·        All of the technical maintenance work is taken care of — Setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.

·        Your blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’ll always remain available, even under high traffic

·        Your content is backed up automatically

·        You’ll get extra traffic from being a part of the WordPress.com community

·        You can find like-minded bloggers using search and the reader

·        Your dashboard is secure (SSL) making it even safer to log in on shared networks

WordPress.com Cons         

·        We provide 200+ themes  which you can customize, but you cannot upload a custom theme

·        You can’t modify the PHP code behind your blog

·        You can’t upload plugins

   WordPress.org (self-hosted) Benefits

·        Ability to upload custom themes

·        Ability to upload plugins

·        Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded

WordPress.org (self-hosted) Cons

·        You need a good web host  — This generally costs $7-12 a month, or thousands of dollars per month for a high traffic site

·        Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run

·        You’re responsible for stopping spam

·        You’re responsible for creating and maintaining backups of your site

·        You’re responsible for updating the WordPress software when new versions are released

·        If you get a huge spike in traffic, your site will probably go down unless you have a robust hosting setup

WordPress is free blogging software. With WordPress, you can install themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database and even modify the PHP code that powers your site. Anyone can download the software for free from http://wordpress.com, but it must be installed on a web server before it will work. Hosting your own WordPress software can be fun and rewarding, but it also places full responsibility on the blogger. If you mismanage your web server, you could lose your entire blog.

WordPress.org is the website where the free WordPress software can be downloaded.

For no charge, WordPress.org provides downloadable blog software, community mailing lists, community support forums, documentation, and free themes and plugins.

WordPress.com is different. You don’t have to download software, pay for hosting, or manage a web server to use WordPress.com. Instead, you can focus on creating awesome content!

When you sign up for a WordPress.com blog, you’ll get a URL like andy.wordpress.com, or you can map a domain like myblog.com.

You don’t control the software or the database, so FTP and shell access are not included. For security and performance reasons, custom themes or plugins can’t be uploaded to WordPress.com.

However, a number of great premium upgrades are available including Custom Design, which lets you customize the appearance of your site with CSS and take advantage of special web fonts.

For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, real-time traffic stats, comment tracking, and other features not available anywhere else.

These features will always be free for blogs started on WordPress.com; if you ever find yourself being charged for these at WordPress.com, pinch yourself and wake up!

WordPress.com is a commercial enterprise owned by Automatic, a company started by the founding developer of WordPress and staffed by full-time developers, designers and happiness engineers. Developments sponsored by Automattic are regularly contributed back into the WordPress software so the community can benefit.

WordPress.com offers premium upgrades as a way to provide special features without forcing bloggers to host their blogs elsewhere. These upgrades are strictly optional. Basic blogs will always be free on WordPress.com and the basic services will continue to be upgraded with better features!