fracas

From time to time, someone comes along and wonders about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Being a user of both, I thought I would write a post explaining this, to help out folks who are confused.

The good folks at WordPress though, often have already done a better job at it than I could do, and this case is no different. I shall instead, link to a (sticky) post in the help forums available to the WordPress.com users.

WordPress.com or WordPress.org? The difference.

My personal opinion?

If you plan to monetize (make money from) your blog, start out by finding inexpensive hosting and downloading the WordPress.org software. You will avoid the headache of doing well, deciding to monetize, and then realizing that you’ll have to take a traffic and a ranking hit to switch.

If you plan on blogging for personal reasons, for fun, or for any number of reasons that won’t involve the need to profit from your blog, feel free to choose WordPress.com. The support is phenomenal, the headaches are few and you really can sign up and be blogging within minutes. It’s easy, stress-free (for the most part) and you will benefit traffic-wise from the tag referrrals you’ll get. Truly a no-brainer way to blog, and despite what all those Blogger-lovers will tell you, I’ve blogged on Blogger and I’ve blogged using both WordPress.com and WordPress.org and between the free Blogger service and the free WordPress service, there is no comparison. WordPress wins without a doubt. I like WordPress so much, some time ago, I even wrote a little ditty about them….

If you have other questions, please post them and I’ll try to help. If I dont’ know the answer, I bet I know someone who will!