WordPress .com and .org
Twizzle • 5 Mar 2022 •
Considering WordPress is supposed to be an easy tool for (non-technical) people to pick up and use to create their own websites, there are still things that confuse a lot of people.
The first is whether to use the hosted WordPress.com version, or the downloadable WordPress.org. WordPress.com is a free service offered by WordPress, where they host your site and provided a limited number of themes and plugins you can use. You can pay for higher tiers such as the business plan, which will allow you to sell items from your site, attach your own personal domain or insert ads to make money. They also offer some user support as part of this monthly cost, but the forum approach to this often leads to confusion and wrong answers.
The free WordPress.org version has to be installed on a web host such as Bluehost. The WordPress software is free, but you will have to pay for the domain name and monthly hosting charges. Beyond that, you have free reign to use as many themes or plugins as you want. There are no limits to the size or complexity of the site you want to create - but you are on your own if you run into any issues.
When people are told they need a WordPress website, they often end up signing up with the more obvious WordPress.com and unless they pay for the higher service levels, they will be stuck with a mydomain.wordpress.com type address and limits on what they can do. It’s nice to get a free website, but the charges compared to hosting things yourself can be insane.
It’s not that WordPress are profiting from this confusion though. Well, not purposely. Some people don’t want to worry about selecting a hosting company, fussing over site speed due to code bloat, managing their own CDN’s or worrying about crashing the site when you upgrade a plugin or theme. Using a pre-tested, feature limited free service can be of benefit.
I quite often read posts from people on the WordPress subreddit where they are shocked at the costs of upgrading so they can do something simple like include ads. Often, it is not financially viable for them to do so. The commenters will all push the person towards hosting the WordPress.org version and doing things themselves, but with that comes a whole other realm of choices and problems.
Having the hosted .com and the free .org version of WordPress is a good thing, but for some people I believe there needs to be a version in the middle. Something with full access to build your site the way you want, using the plugins and themes you want, but with additional support and hosting. Some people just don’t want to ever have to stray into their cPanel.
Comments
@tao The web host I use has a free WP installer that automatically upgrades WP as new releases come out. I think they also offer paid options for managing the site. It’s interesting how integrated my host now is with WP. I used to unpack everything myself and set up the database, then the host started offering installers for many different content management systems like Concrete and Textpattern, and eventually they must have realized 99% of their users were just using WP and they dropped everything else. I could still use other systems but would need to install them and upgrade them myself. That’s too much work for something I’m going to abandon 3 weeks later.
Yeah - most hosts do offer some sort of 1-click install of WordPress now, handling the tricky parts of setting up databases etc. It’s just the ongoing maintenance that people get stuck with I think - either leaving their sites at old PHP/plugin/theme/WP versions “just in case” which leads to problems or blindly updating things and then getting stuck when it crashes (which is not really their fault). Maybe the issue is that WordPress generates too many variables to consider. The core base version doesn’t give people what they want out of the box, so they are reliant on plugins or themes to make it look good or operate correctly.
@tao I think the middle ground you mentioned is productized services for WP, isn’t it? I’d seen many “unlimited” WP support services, with one time set up fee. You get a wp org site, plus 1 support ticket at any one time to do anything from installing plugins to changing copy. Always felt those are great for busy entrepreneurs who don’t want the hassle of maintaining a site but wants the hands-on aspect