Saturday, October 8, 2011

The Pros and Cons of Self Hosted WordPress

WordPress was introduced back in 2003 and their home website at WordPress.com currently has over 10 million blogs hosted on their site alone. However, WordPress is an open-source project which means other users can download the latest build of WordPress, modify it any way they like and host it on their own website so they can manage their own blog or CMS. This resulted to over 200 million websites using the platform for blogging and other content management purposes. with both figures vastly different, some investigation regarding the pros and cons of a self-hosted WordPress is needed if you are considering the WordPress platform to suit your needs.

Pros

When you create an account at WordPress.com you will realize that you are only restricted to the basic blogging functions. This is normal for security purposes so that people will not take advantage and inject harmful code that can potentially exploit the visitors. However, this security measure removes a lot of the customization functions that WordPress features. You also need to agree to the site’s Terms of Agreement if you want to post content there. once you place WordPress on your site, the rules are only limited by your hosting provider.

These limitations are lifted when you download the WordPress files and upload them to a website host that supports PHP. When you first launch your newly installed CMS, you may be greeted with a similar interface. As you explore the options and settings, you will realize that you have full control over the options because you are the site administrator and are therefore the administrator of your blog.

This means that you can customize the blog to your liking if you feel that the WordPress default theme is too generic. WordPress.com does offer some nice templates to choose from, but a self-hosted WordPress website expands to limitless possibilities where you can download a new WordPress theme that was recently made by someone and upload it to your host for immediate use. once you explored the WordPress platform far enough, you may be able to create your own theme and use it as well.

You can also expand the functionality beyond blogging by adding new plugins to your blog. Since it is open-source, you can re-engineer WordPress to better integrate with other parts of your website.

Cons

Although WordPress itself is free, you will have to choose a paid hosting provider since it is usually those that support PHP. Even if you are contented with a free hosting provider that supports WordPress, you may still need to purchase a domain name if you wish to market your blog. Users registered at WordPress.com can set a subdomain that is easy to memorize. Finally, WordPress blogs require added maintenance especially if they are hosted in shared hosting servers.

Bottom Line

The pros clearly outnumber the cons here making a self-hosted website more worthwhile for hosting larger and more expansive blogs. only register at the WordPress website if you are using it for the first time or wish to maintain a simple blog for personal use.

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