WordPress.com Vs WordPress.org

Seperti yang sudah aku sampaikan di postingan awal, nge-blog dengan script WP yang diambil dari WordPress.org dang nge-blog pakai host gratisan dari WordPress.com, jelas banyak bedanya. Seperti yang sudah jelas-jelas dan saklek ditulis di Faq-nya :

You may find yourself blogging here on WordPress.com for a while and then realize that you want to make some changes to the software. You ask around: “Is it possible to edit your theme in WordPress?” People tell you that it is possible, yet you can’t find a way to do it. This can be confusing! Why can’t you upload plugins? Why can’t you upload themes? Why can’t you edit files? Why aren’t the menus there? Why can’t you do things the way the documentation (Codex) says?

The confusion comes from not understanding the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Let’s clear it up.

WordPress.org is blogging software that is freely available to anyone to download. That site provides free software and documentation on how to use it. The software must be downloaded and installed onto a computer. WordPress, being internet software, must be installed on a web server–that’s a computer that is set up to serve web pages over the internet–and your personal computer probably isn’t a web server. So, to make the free WordPress software work, you have to own a web server or rent some space on one. That’s called hosting and it’s not usually free. There are plenty of good hosts out there who will let you install WordPress on their web servers for a reasonable fee. You can then do anything you like with your own copy of WordPress: install plugins and themes, etc.

WordPress.com is different. It’s a web site that provides blogs hosted free of charge. The software on WordPress.com is not the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It is a multi-user version of WordPress that allows many thousands of blogs to be hosted on a single web server. The free blog hosting does not come with the ability to upload plugins or themes. Because any change in the software affects every blog on the system, many of the things you can do on your own hosted WordPress blog are disabled here. Some of these features may become available in the future as paid upgrades, comparable with traditional hosting fees.

WordPress.org Benefits

* Ability to upload themes
* Ability to upload plugins
* Great community
* Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded
* Your own domain

WordPress.org Cons

* You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month
* Requires more technical knowledge to run
* You’re responsible for stopping spam
* You have to handle backups
* You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes out
* If you get a huge spike in traffic (like Digg or Slashdot) you site will probably go down

WordPress.com Cons

* Limited customization of themes (though we’re adding more every day)
* You can’t hack the code behind your blog
* You can’t have your own domain (we’re going to make this possible)

WordPress.com Benefits

* It’s much easier
* Everything is taken care of: upgrades, backups, security, etc
* Your blog is on dozens of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
* Your posts are backed up hourly
* Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi
* You can find like-minded bloggers using tags