WordPress.com or WordPress.org – Which Is Right For You?

WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

One of the most confusing things about WordPress is that there’s basically two ways you can use it and your decision will have a significant impact on what you can do with your website. You can use the WordPress.com service, or you can use the self-hosted version, also referred to as WordPress.org. If you want the quick n’ dirty feature comparison, you can check out this handy chart. Or read on for my take on the implications, and my recommendations.

What’s The Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

WordPress.com is a hosted platform meaning that you go to the website WordPress.com, sign up for a free account and they host your blog for you. You have to do very little set-up work. Initially they will give you a url for your new blog such as lucy.wordpress.com – there are ways to change that, but that’s your first indicator that your blog actually lives on the WordPress.com servers.

The other option is usually referred to as WordPress.org, or self-hosted WordPress. This is where you buy your own hosting plan and install the WordPress software on it. The software itself is ALWAYS free – you are paying a hosting company, not WordPress or Automattic (the parent company) themselves. You will need to buy a domain name to use WordPress this way, so your site will live at yourdomain.com – whatever you have chosen. 

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How To Make Sure Your WordPress Site Looks Good on Facebook

how to make your WordPress site look good on Facebook

Here’s an interesting factoid for you. Approximately once every 13 seconds* another blogger posts on an internet forum or group a variation on the following question: “Why does Facebook always show the wrong image when I post a link to my blog ?!!”

This post is a guide to what’s going on and how to make it right.

I preface it with this caveat:

Facebook is a mean ole bully and often changes the way that it operates suddenly and without warning. What works today could become obsolete tomorrow. Today, this is what works.

Get To Know The Open Graph Protocol

The Open Graph Protocol is a particular set of meta data – that is, information about your site, that goes into the code of your site. Both Facebook and Google Plus look for this meta data in order to learn about your website.

When it’s all present and correct your site looks lovely in Facebook.
When it’s not there, they make stuff up based on whatever they can grab.

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Beginner’s WordPress Class at Coloft, Santa Monica

WordPress class - Coloft Santa MonicaColoft is an awesome co-working space in Santa Monica. In addition to providing the physical space where entrepreneurs can work together, they also foster community and creativity. One of the value-adds they provide is Coloft Academy – an ongoing series of extremely affordable classes on everything from productivity, business strategy, design and marketing. I am going to be teaching a Beginner’s WordPress class as part of the Academy series.

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WordPress 101 Video – Understanding Core WordPress Concepts

WordPress 101 - Orange County WordCamp 2013

I recently had the honor of presenting at WordCamp Orange County 2013. I was asked to give a “WordPress 101” talk which may sound simple, but is deceptively so! It’s actually quite a challenge. I teach WordPress every day so the material is second nature, but in a presentation you only have about 30 minutes, so it’s impossible to convey all the information that WordPress 101 could potentially encompass.

My approach was not to go the mechanical nuts n’ bolts route of “this is how you install WordPress, here’s how you make a post” etc. Instead I focused on the understanding of basic concepts in WordPress which are absolutely necessary – differences between posts and pages, understanding what menus are and how they work, how themes work, the difference between a plugin and a widget etc. These are all areas that I see beginners grapple with understanding at first. If you don’t get these core concepts down, you’ll have problems with WordPress. 

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How To Use Shortcodes In WordPress

How To Use WordPress Shortcodes

WordPress shortcodes are a powerful feature that theme and plugin developers use to give users advanced tools at their disposal, but they continually confuse people. They are infinitely easier than writing actual HTML and CSS but can still freak out the typical user.

Why are shortcodes useful?

Using only the WordPress editor, one’s options for laying out a page or post would be limited to one block of text, perhaps interspersed with an image, video or maybe a photo gallery. What if you want to create a more visually interesting layout? Such as splitting your content area into columns, for example? Or including buttons, highlights and other fancy visual styles?

To write that kind of HTML and CSS would be quite tedious and beyond the abilities of most users. It would also create a lot of messy code in your WordPress editor, muddying the lines between content (which is primarily what you should be editing in WordPress) and code.

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You are not 9 years old, or…how people REALLY learn WordPress

How People Really Learn WordPress

While on the Facebook recently I was targeted with an ad that told me that if a certain 9 year old child can make WordPress websites, I should be able to as well.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen such marketing messages that tout WordPress to be so easy that a kid can do it. Even putting aside (which trust me, was reeeaaally hard for me to do!) the fact that the product seems to have been made by some cheeseball internet-marketing-bandwagon-jumper-type and that it’s all possibly fake anyway, this approach to selling WordPress irritates the bejesus out of me for a couple of reasons.

First, when you tell me I should be able to do something a kid can do, it makes me feel kind of dumb and it also makes me feel like you are being condescending to me.

Way to set the tone. (And I’m someone that does know how to make websites. So imagine how that feels to someone that has found it difficult to learn WordPress!)

Of course, I get the point they are making – WordPress isn’t rocket science so get over yourself and build that site you’ve been talking about. Fair enough. And yes, a child could quite feasibly set up and manage a blog.

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