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Finding my way at WordPress.com and then sharing my observations with friends who at times are like me... lost!
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4 reasons why I prefer a self-hosted WordPress blog
November 10, 2009
By way of background, below entry was meant to be posted at my WordPress.com blogsite to conclude my seven weeks of blogging there. Instead, I decided to post it to this site. Hopefully, this will explain why most of my posts and articles in this site refer to WordPress.com.
I am using the same title I have at WordPress.com for this blog, Working and WordPress-ing. In my seven weeks of blogging at WordPress.com, I have posted more than 20 entries mainly dealing with “how-to’s” which made available in this site.
***
On day 1 when I started this blog, I mentioned that I am here at WordPress.com to gain insight into how it is to blog at WordPress.com.
Now running into my seventh week into this WP blogging journey and after 24 posts, I think I can say that I have achieved my objective. I’ve learned a lot, and I thought I was able to return the favour by sharing with you what I learned plus my experience as a self-hosted blogger.
We have covered various topics by way of posts and comments including the following :
The above articles are available on this site as well as in my WordPress.com blog.
Now that we have covered most of the basics in WP blogging, it’s time to move on. ( Note: I exported my WP posts to this site today.)
I will still be writing articles on WordPress-related topics, but these will be posted in my self-hosted blog and if allowed, distributed here.
What makes a self-hosted WordPress blog attractive to me? Conversely, what makes a WordPress-hosted blog unattractive to me?
Here are four reasons:
Themes. I like to experiment with themes, their layout, their architecture, their CSS, etc. This, I can not do here at WordPress.com unless I upgrade my account. Currently, WordPress.com has 77 themes. They are good themes, I admit, but most of them do not meet my requirements. (Like this theme I am using right now is not among the 77 themes.)
Plugins. I am restricted from installing plugins or scripts.
Inbound Traffic. Whilst a WP-hosted blog can leverage on the traffic coming from the traffic of other WP blogs flowing from “Possibly related-posts” linked at the bottom of every post, the traffic that I generate for my blog is “credited” to WordPress.com. Should I decide later to blog in a self-hosted blog (like this one), the traffic ranking I generated for my WP-hosted blog remain with WordPress.com. It is not portable.
Revenue. On paper, there are restrictions from running third-party ads in a WP blog. This is covered by point #5 / Item 2 of WP’s Terms of Service (see part of the provision which I styled in bold, below):
Setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog is not that difficult. If you need help, please do not hesitate to contact me. Our group offers web hosting which includes WordPress and other blogging platforms.