BY CHRISTINA GWIRA

As a designer, I get asked many times about the platform that I use in building client websites. When I first started out in web design, I coded everything from scratch. As time progressed, I was introduced to the CMS Joomla and I loved it! However, I found it to be clunky and very hard for my clients to use to manage their website. Now, my platform of choice is WordPress due to its ease of use not only for me as a developer, but also for my clients. Continue reading to learn more about the potential benefits and pitfalls of WordPress for your business.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is an open source blogging platform and CMS (content management system). As of 2016, WordPress powered close to 30% of the websites that are currently on the web*. That’s A LOT of websites! WordPress started off as a blogging platform and has transformed over the years into a powerful website builder for websites like ours as well as networks like CNN, Playstation and The New York Times. However, did you know that there are two types of WordPress platforms that you can use for your business or blog?

WordPress.com is the hosted platform of WordPress. It is predominately used for blogging and small business websites.  WordPress.org is the open-source version of WordPress. This version allows you to download the source code onto your web host of choice and start building your own website. There are many uses for the open-source version of WordPress including but not limited to: websites, blogs, e-commerce stores and much more.

Though both WordPress.com and WordPress.org are related, there are several benefits and challenges that can come about using each one of these platforms for your website. Continue reading below to see which one is best for you and your business.

Benefits of WordPress.com

Quick Points:

1. You can use the platform for FREE
2. Easy to navigate and setup
3. Updated frequently

As mentioned earlier, WordPress.com is a hosted platform used mostly for blogging. There can be very low costs associated with setting up your blog or website on WordPress.com. After all, you can setup your WordPress.com website for FREE! This platform comes with several hundred themes that you can use for your website that cover a variety of styles and sectors. There are also some plugins that can be added to your new website to further extend the blogging features of the platform.

In addition to the free platform, you can upgrade your WordPress.com website for as little as $4/month. Some premium features that you can add on to your website include e-commerce functionality, a custom domain name, premium themes, additional customization functions and more. Since your website is hosted on WordPress.com, you do not have to worry about hosting, security, hacking or upgrading any software since they will take care of it all for you!

Challenges of WordPress.com

Quick Points:

1. Limited number of themes
2. Limited number of plugins
3. No e-commerce functionality

Though there are quite a number of free and premium (paid) themes with WordPress.com, the number of available themes pales in comparison to those that are available for the open-source version of the software. In addition to having a limited number of themes, there aren’t that many custom modifications that you can make to the themes unless you decide to upgrade from the free package. If you are sticking to a budget, the extra couple of dollars for a few custom colors and fonts may not be something that you’d like.

You also have a limited number of plugins that you can use with the WordPress.com platform. Things like analytics, e-commerce, chat modules and more are all great ways to extend your blog or website. However, these types of plugins aren’t available for users of the WordPress.com platform. The way that WordPress.com handles e-commerce is either by upgrading from the free plan, or having another e-commerce website hosted elsewhere and then linking that back to your website. This isn’t exactly an elegant or professional solution.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to pay a small monthly fee to get your blog or small business website out there, you should consider using WordPress.com for your website. It provides you with the security in knowing that your website is safe is great for SEO (search engine optimization) and can provide you with many ways to extend the uses of your website. In the next issue, I’ll be talking about my preferred version of WordPress and the full possibilities that it has to offer you and I: WordPress.org.