http://www.legalandrew.com/2007/03/29/
get-your-own-domain-and-wordpress-for-your-blog/
Get Your Own Domain and WordPress for Your Blog
posted March 29, 2007 by Andrew Flusche
***Begin Quote***
Free hosts are great for the casual blogger, but they’re not right for companies or individuals wanting to distinguish themselves. The primary reason is control. If you own your domain and pay for hosting, you control your blog. You decide what you can and can’t do.
***End Quote***
Of course, being a giant turkey, and not knowing any different, I commented. How else does one learn?
Ferdinand Reinke says:
I guess I’ll say I don’t understand. Sorry, maybe I’m being a little dense. (1) What do I want to “control” that I can’t do on the free blog at WordPress? (2) I’ve been doing the “free thing” for over a year now and have a substantial amount of content on the free WordPress blog site. If you convinced me to move to a paid WordPress account somewhere, what would be the benefits, challenges, and migration activities? Maybe I’m just being more than a little dense, but I have not seen anything “bad” at the free WordPress offering. And, I think I’m pretty critical. Thanks for the education, fjohn
To which Andrew replied, both in his blog and by an email:
***begin quote***
Ferdinand,
I definitely don’t think WordPress.com is “bad.” In fact, for many bloggers, it’s a great option. It just wasn’t right for me, mostly because I didn’t have ultimate control over my blog. Here are some thoughts on limitations of a free blog:
With a free blog, you don’t actually own the domain or the blog. You’re just using someone else’s space. I like having the keys to my blog, and knowing that I can do anything I want; I’m not at someone else’s mercy.
Free blogs are inherently limited when it comes to customization. You’re usually stuck with a number of preset themes. WordPress has tons of plugins, but only certain widgets are allowed on WordPress.com.
You also can’t do some things on free platforms, due to the Terms of Service. One example is PayPerPost. We can debate the paid posting model, but the fact is that WordPress.com won’t allow you to do it. I like flexibility.
Migrating to your own custom WordPress installation shouldn’t be too hard. I did it last year. I copied each and every post from WordPress.com to my new installation. There’s probably a way to automate this, but I’m not sure. The biggest issue of migrating is that you’ll lose some referral and search traffic, if you’re not careful. You can put redirects on each old page, but this is time consuming. Once again, maybe there’s an automatic way for this to work.
Best of luck in whatever you decide,
Andrew
PS: I’m happy to help with a specific issue or question. I hope this answers some general questions.
***end quote***
Now, I know about the widget restriction. Javascript is basically verboten on the free site. And, I doubt I’d ever attract the readership to make any money out of this. So up to now, the idea of moving off the free site, never interested me. But, like bozos who use a hotmail email address for their jobsearch, maybe I am being “dense”. I started to look at WordPress’ preferred hosting vendors. One has some gripes about their availability and others are focused on webhosting with barely a mention of WordPress.
Have to think if that effort is worth the cost in dollars and attention.
One item of note: I found Legal Andrew as a result of a blog carnival hosted by Jason Alba of JibberJobber http://www.jibberjobber.com. So, one truly has to keep your eyes open and connect the dots to learn all the “tricks of the trade”. Blogging trade that is.
I was exchanging email with G. Lane Cavalier of “Connecting the World One Beverage at a Time” http://glcavalier.wordpress.com/ about my thoughts on this topic. I referred him to the blog and he came back and asked where I had blogged about it. Of course, being lost in the subject, I had forgotten to hang it out here. Duh. That’s for the reminder Lane. P.S.: Listening to my favorite podcast http://www.freetalklive.com I’ve been know to drive by my exit in the morning too.
Bottom line: I’m not sure that moving off the free WordPress is a good idea or easily done. Still thinking about that/
by ,
Reinke Faces Life 