In December of last year we decided to move our blog from a hosted WordPress to WordPress.com (abbreviated as WP.com). I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages in the post Moving to WordPress.com – What to Consider. For several months it remained the right place for our blog and I still think it was the correct decision at the time. But many of the advantages of hosting with WordPress.com have actually been overridden by updates to the WordPress software. Here are the key reasons we went back to a hosted WordPress…
Complete Control over Site
WordPress.com provides many great themes and widgets, and with a reasonable upgrade ($15/year) you can customize the CSS for one of the themes. While the selection of themes and widgets was good, there’s a lot that you can do with widgets and themes they don’t support.
Whatever Themes We Want
We purchased the Thesis theme for this site (which I highly recommend – more info in an upcoming post), which allows you to control much of the site through the admin that you normally would have to do through the php. We wouldn’t have the ability for that level of control through WP.com, and while their themes are nice, there’s something to be said for choosing the right theme for your particular blog.
Widgets, Widgets, Widgets Everywhere…
WP.com has a decent selection of widgets and plugins, but there are so many more great ones out there that they haven’t approved. Being someone who helps businesses blog, I felt it was important to be able to try out new widgets and plugins without having to wait for WP.com’s time frame. Being able to finally integrate with Disqus comments was important because I think they have a great way of doing comments (and as a user you can see comments on all the blogs that use their system in one place).
Yay Javascript!
WP.com doesn’t allow any script tags or javascript on their site, supposedly for security reasons, which I can understand. But this is important because script tags are how you put many widgets from social networks on your site, as well as more critical things like Google Analytics and other statistics applications. Now we also can link directly to affiliate programs and advertising, which may not be important from your standpoint, but are from a business standpoint.
Stats – The Way I Want Them
Because WP.com didn’t allow javascript, we were unable to use Google Analytics for the blog while we were there. Google Analytics integrates very nicely with FeedBurner (for rss feeds), Google Ads, and gives us great information about where we’re getting traffic. WP.com has their own stats system, which I think is based somewhat off Google Analytics, but just isn’t nearly as powerful. Plus, there’s really not the same level of understanding with their system as there is with Google Analytics in terms of how it figures out the statistics. All my other sites are tracked with Google, and now I can see everything in one place.
Upgrades & Hosting Much Easier
Since we went to WP.com, WordPress has had several updates to their software, including the ability to install plugins right from the admin, and do upgrades to WP through the admin (this used to take some backend work). This hassle was one of the major reasons we went to WP.com and it really no longer exists. We were able to use a local hosting company and have pretty good hosting for what was a reasonable trade-off for the increased control. Plus, we’ll be able to host multiple sites with the account, spreading the cost out over several projects.
The Trades-Offs Swung The Other Way
When it came down to it, with the upgrades to the WordPress software, reasonable hosting, and full control over the site, the pendulum swung back to going with a hosted WordPress solution.
What about you? Do you use WordPress.com or a hosted version? Why?
Technorati tags: blog, blogging, blogs, strategy, business, wordpress, business blogging
Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.
The post Why I Moved Off WordPress.com appeared first on Sazbean.