What is WordPress Really?
WordPress is an open source content management system (CMS) that lets people easily create a site with ease. The problem we see around the internet is that there’s a ton of confusion around how their WordPress site is hosted and what WordPress really is. WordPress is usually described as having two different variants. WordPress.com, and WordPress.org. We’ll be going into greater detail of how both of these work and how they’re different, but on a basic level, they work like this:
WordPress.com is where Automattic (the group who created WordPress) hosts a limited version of WordPress for you, while WordPress.org is the downloadable version of WordPress that you can install and host on almost any web host around the world.
What’s WordPress.com?
WordPress.com is a place to start out blogging for free, and you get a yourname.wordpress.com domain. You can upgrade your plan to introduce features like a custom domain (e.g. yourdomain.com), custom CSS/stylesheets, removing WordPress.com ads, and upgraded storage space (though unless paying for the largest plan, the storage plans are pretty abysmal.)
The problem with WordPress.com is that you can only utilize their own selection of themes and their very limited selection of pre-built plugins. Unfortunately it’s because of this that we see a lot of people mention how limited ‘WordPress’ is. Luckily there’s hope!
What’s WordPress.org?
WordPress.org is a downloadable package that you can run on a web server and have the features of WordPress.com and more (including custom plugins and themes). WordPress touts this as their famous ‘5 minute installation’, though with inexperienced users, this can become quite the headache. Fortunately most web hosts provide easy ‘one-click’ installations of WordPress and will complete the setup for you!
The advantage of WordPress.org/self-hosted installations is that the sky’s the limit! Themeforest.net and Codecanyon.net are great places to find premium custom themes and plugins (I recommend Jupiter as a theme to see how customizable your site can get without touching any code).
Some hosts that we recommend for easy setup of WordPress.org installations are Dreamhost, SiteGround, or Cloudways.
This is too confusing, I want something even MORE simple!
Have no fear! If you’re looking to still create your own website, but after checking out the above if things still seem too hard for you, we recommend looking into Squarespace. They’re a great place that helps handle everything from beginning to end.
Of course, if all of this is over your head, feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to help create a functional and attractive website for your business.
