Wordpress.org vs. Wordpress.com

Here are my top 5 reasons for choosing to use Wordpress.org for your online business over Wordpress.com

 

1. You own it. You can do anything you want with it (assuming it’s legal of course).  With Wordpress.com they own it.  Your site is on their servers.  They control what you can do with it and if they don’t like what you’ve done they can… take it down.  This means weeks, months or even years of work could suddenly disappear.
2. You can upload themes. You can choose from hundreds of themes online that you can download and use for free.  You can also purchase premium themes and even design your own themes.  With Wordpress.com you have to use one of their 70+ themes.  You can modify the theme, but you can’t run a custom theme.  This means that your blog will probably look like thousands of others using the same theme.
3. You can upload plugins and widgets. These add functionality and can enhance the design of your site.   Wordpress.org provides unlimited flexibility and customization options.  You have complete control over the look and feel of your site.   You can even change the underlying PHP code if you know how.
4. You can run ads on your site. In fact, there is no restrictions on monetization. With the dot com variety they don’t allow you to run ads on your site because  they run their own ads on it.  You can’t really blame them for that though, it’s how they keep the service free.
5. You can have your own domain name and domain email address.  The standard domain name on the dot com version looks like this:  http://johndoe.wordpress.com.   You can have your own domain name with the dot com version, if you pay an upgrade fee.  I think it’s $15 per year.

So the bottom line is if you just want to build a practice site, a hobby site that you don’t plan to monetize, or a special interest site on a topic that you just like to talk about then the dot com version may work out ok for you.  On the other hand if you are planning to build a business or become a serious blogger then I strongly recommend going with Wordpress.org.

scource: crashcoursetraining.com

 

 

 

Wordpress or Blogger?

Simplifying your question. Blogger from Google is hosted by Google and may be used effectively.

Wordpress may be self hosted by yourself (the hosting company you choose) or it may be hosted by Wordpress. Both are very effective to use based on your needs.

However, a Wordpress self hosted is the most useful and most effective in most of the situations. It provides more protection of losing the site, better SEO benefits, and more control of your domain with the possibility of selling the site later.

When you have a plan and future goals defined, then you will be able to make the best choice.

You must take in consideration what you are really trying to accomplish in order to make a final decision and choose the best direction to fit your needs.

Also, you must decide if you want quality or quantity. When you are new or don't want to build a reputation for yourself, you might tilt toward quantity.

Why use WordPress?

If you are new to WordPress and looking for reasons to use WordPress as a CMS (content management system) in your new website, let me give you some.

User Friendly
You don’t really have to be experienced to use WordPress on your website. Nowadays most of the hosting companies provide the ability to install WordPress on your site at a single click of the mouse. The administration section is easy to navigate and its even easy to add articles/content to your website.
Large community Support
As per recent statistics, WordPress is used on more than 1% of the websites on the Internet in the world. There is a large user community backing the development of this software. So, whenever you face any problems, you can go through all the available WordPress forums and communities and find answers for all your questions.
Themes Support
You will never run short of templates when using WordPress. If you don’t like the themes that come with the default installation of WordPress, you can hunt on the Internet and you will find thousands of free themes that you can download and use for your website. There are themes which can even make your website look like a regular site instead of a blog.

Standards CompliantWordPress is one software that follows all the Web Standards and keeps your blog or website compliant to all the rules that have to be followed when running a website.
Open Source Software
WordPress is an Open Source software which allows it to be used free of cost. You can use it on any kind of personal or commercial website without have to pay a single dime for it. It is built on PHP/MySQL (which is again Open Source) and licensed under GPL.
SEO Friendly
Search Engines have to be definitely kept in mind when building a website. WordPress uses different functions which allow it to be search engine friendly. For example sending pings to other sites, making categories, tagging your posts, use of h1/h2 tags etc.
Plugins Extend Functionality
WordPress plugins allow you to do just about anything that you want and can be installed in a jiffy. For example, you want to paginate your blog posts, just look on Google and you can easily find the relevant plugin that will easily do the job for you.

The beauty of wordpress

The beauty of wordpress is the easy to do on-site SEO and off-site promotion. RSS feeds and done by default; you can install Ping tools; you can integrate it with bookmarking services like Onlywire and Ping.fm; you can integrate it with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook; you can create sitemaps easily.