Yesterday I switched over from using WordPress.com to hosting my blog on Bluehost and using the official WordPress blogging environment. The main difference here is when you are using WordPress.com, there is some gray area about who really has control over the content. You are ultimately at the whims of their hosting structure, and also you must pay through the nose to access the various features of the actual WordPress blogging platform it claims to deal with.
WordPress is an open-source blogging platform, and is very widely used. Wonderful plug-ins are created to increase its functionality and customizability, and I have enjoyed dealing with it. WordPress.com, on the other hand, is a company run by one of the people who created the WordPress platform in the first place, but has various hosting options built in. For people who just want to get things going and keep things simple, that’s fine. I still run OHAC on WordPress.com, and things are going fine. But, I wanted more ability to be in control of my personal blog, and not have to worry about something going wrong that I didn’t have control over.
This is in large part influenced by the post I have written which will be published this upcoming week, the first part in a long series about why I use Linux. As you will understand once you read it, one main part of using Linux is freedom to customize the software you’re using, as well as software being actually free. WordPress.com provides neither of these; WordPress as a platform allows both. So, I switched things over, created a simplified dark template, and I’m loving it. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it a bit as well.