Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org
Over the past few days, I’ve been making some changes to this blog. I’m trying to make it easier for people to read the blog by offering subscription options (read via RSS or get the blog via email) while gathering more data about who is currently reading it. I’d also like to add standard “social bookmarking” to each post to make it easy for my readers to post stories on other sites (like Digg and Reddit).
We use Wordpress as our blogging platform. As I’ve looked to add these additional features, one thing I’ve learned is that there is a big difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org. It’s very confusing. Basically, Wordpress.com is the “hosted” version while Wordpress.org is the version that you have to download and host yourself. What’s particularly annoying is that there are key features available if you host it yourself, and this is not at all clear on the Wordpress.com (hosted) site.
From a marketing point of view, I think this product is a mess. They need to have *one* site, and list the differences between hosting it yourself and their “hosted solution.” If you look at these sites, they almost treat it as if they are a different company (the .com vs the .org) and hardly mention anything about the other. And they don’t provide any information about how you would “upgrade” from their hosted site to hosting it yourself. I wasted way too much time trying to figure this all out.
Hey Automattic: get rid of your Wordpress.org site. Put all of the information on the Wordpress.com site. Create a chart that describes the hosted vs. “hosting it yourself” products right on the Wordpress.com homepage. Offer a clear path to go from hosted to hosting it yourself. Oh, and while you’re at it, create an easy way to add a social bookmarking buttons to every post (on Wordpress.com).
Ok, I’m done.
August 18th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Nice Blog! keep posting so that we can all benefit from your writing!