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I’ve had a couple of emails and comments from people asking what the difference is between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org, and where they should start their blog.

So here we go….

Wordpress For Dummies

Wordpress is a platform. A big whole pile of code that, when all put together, forms a blog. Wordpress is NOT a website. It is a platform. So if you want to start a wordpress blog you have 2 choices.

#1. Go to wordpress.com, and they will host that big pile of code for you.

#2. Go to wordpress.org and download that big pile of code, install it on your own web host, and run the blog yourself.

So what’s the advantage of #1? 

You don’t need to be paying for a web host each month.
You don’t need to worry about any wordpress updates (updates to that big pile of code).

And what’s the advantage of #2?

You don’t have to abide by the wordpress.com Terms of Service, which prohibits ‘commercial’ blogs.
You can add javascript to the sidebars (including google adsense), and have the ability to customise the look and feel of each theme.
You can install any theme that has been made for the wordpress platform, whereas wordpress.com has a limited number of themes (although enough to get started).
You can install plugins, which make your blog to different things - from post to twitter automatically, to optimising the blog for search engines.

If you have never had a blog before and you don’t have your own web hosting package (to host your own website, etc), I would recommend going with Wordpress.com for now.

But don’t forget to do regular ‘exports’ of your blog. This creates a complete backup, posts, comments, tags, categories, the lot, for you to upload to another wordpress blog. So if at a later date you decide to move to a wordpress.org self-hosted blog, it will be fairly pain-free and seamless.

Hope this helps!

Lewis

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Filed under: Blogging, Lens Promotion