There’s always something to howl about.

Understanding the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org plus a little bit about custom domain names

Here’s a point of confusion I often notice when people begin their search for a blogging platform:

There are two different flavors of WordPress.

WordPress.com is a hosted platform. You go there and sign up for account, pick a pre-designed theme, and start blogging.   It’s free, it’s very easy.  Software updates and security are handled for you.  However, You don’t have an option of custom designing your own theme, your choice of plugins andwidgets is limited. You cannot FTP into your blog.

 It’s not a bad idea to go ahead and set up a blog on WordPress.com, even if you don’t intend it as your primary business blog.  Make it a “cat blog”. It will give you a chance to test drive the post editor interface, practice adding images or videos with the “Add Media” tool, and get a feel for the concept of changing themes. 

WordPress.org is a web site from which you can download the WordPress software. You then install the WordPress software on your own host. Same concept as installing a new program on your own computer, except that you are installing a new program on a remote “host” computer.   You can install any plugins or themes you like, and customize them to your heart’s content.  You can run affiliate advertising, and edit the database. You can write your own PHP code and use it in the blog’s design. 

Although the WordPress.org software is free, you will need a hosting account somewhere. That’s not free.  Average hosting fees run about $10 per month.   My WordPress blogs are hosted on GoDaddy. BHB with much higher bandwidth requirements, is not.  Where is BHB hosted now, Greg? 

I have heard good comments about BlueHost.  Maybe some other contributors will jump in with info on their choice of hosts.

You can register your own custom domain name and use it with either flavor of WordPress, so don’t let anyone mistakenly tell you that you can’t map a domain name to a WordPress.com site.  You can. 

Here is a how-to  I wrote several months ago on mapping a custom domain name to a WordPress.com blog.

And as a FYI, you can register and use a custom domain name with TypePad and Blogger, too.

Here’s the how-to I wrote on how to map a domain on TypePad.

I didn’t write one for Blogger, so here is Blogger’s own how-to map a custom domain name page.