4 reasons not to host your blog on WordPress.com
April 15, 2008 – 11:31 pm | by Miriam SchwabWhen starting out, many bloggers seek out the cheap and easy route, either choosing to blog on Blogger, WordPress.com, or another free and hosted blogging platform. This approach makes sense, since a person can never know until they’ve started if they even like blogging, let alone whether they’ll be successful.I almost always suggest to beginner bloggers to set up a blog on WordPress.com, but the reason is not because I think this is ideal, but because it is easiest to migrate a blog from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress.org site, which is ideal (as opposed to migrating from Blogger, which can be a nightmare). One of the reasons it’s so easy is because you can select the same permalink structure as in your original WP.com blog, and just change the main domain name part in a 301 redirect. Also, by using WP.com, you will become familiar with the WordPress system and interface, which is similar in the self-hosted WordPress.org version.
Why am I against WordPress.com?
I am not against WordPress.com. I think it’s a great service, and the quality of the features is unmatched in any of the other free hosted blogging platforms. In addition, people in the SEO industry have told me that due to the strength of the WordPress.com network, blogs that are hosted there do incredibly well in the SERPs. But if a person wants to take up blogging as a serious activity, or finds that their WordPress.com blog is growing, I suggest that they move their blog off of WP.com to their own self-hosted blog. Here is why:
- Limited blog design flexibility - whenever I’ve tried to use a WordPress.com blog, I’ve always found myself stuck at some point because I can’t add certain features. Users are limited on WP.com by the amount of customization they can do to the CSS, even if they pay for extra access to the CSS. They also can’t customize the loop, and the sidebars can only be modified to the extent that widgets allow. Also, WP.com users can’t add WordPress plugins, which is one of the keys to expanding your blog’s features.
- You don’t control your content - as soon as you are using a service that is hosted by someone else, you have lost partial ownership over your content. I’m not talking about what exactly it says in the WP.com terms of service (we’ll get to that soon), but I am talking about the issue of your content sitting on someone else’s servers. I personally prefer to try to keep my content under one roof - my own. As for the WP.com Terms of Service - you are at the mercy of their discretion as to whether your content is appropriate. When hosting your content on someone else’s servers, you are always at risk that someone may decide that your content is inappropriate, and they can easily shut you down.
- Hosting quality issues may haunt you - if the WP.com servers are having trouble, like the recent DoS attack on the WordPress.com servers, you will suffer. Of course, that is the case on all servers, but if you are really unhappy with a service provider, you can call them up, complain, and always change servers if need be. When your blog is on WP.com, it’s not as easy.
- You are at risk of being censored in certain countries - upon finding content that they don’t like on WP.com, certain countries with undemocratic tendencies will simply block the entire system. While it is possible for them to just block the individual WP.com blogs that they find offensive, these countries either don’t care enough to try, or are happy to block an entire blogging universe since blogging is all about free speech, and they are not. Countries that have blocked WordPress.com are Turkey, China and Brazil.
WordPress.com is a great service, and the people providing it are incredibly generous. However, like any other free hosted service, it has its drawbacks which should be taken into account when deciding on which path to take for your blog: free hosted or paid and self-hosted.
14 Responses to “4 reasons not to host your blog on WordPress.com”
By Netty Gritty on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
hello miriam,
thanks for the link! i wish i could be on wp.org, sometimes. but i love the .COM community and i love the almost hassle-free (most-of-the-time) blogging experience. and seo is another factor.
that’s the reason i’m goonna linger here at wp.com!
By Ryan on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
I doubt there is any benefit to hosting a site on WordPress.com SEO wise. There may be a slight benefit from links via a few pages on the WordPress.com network that you may not have otherwise, but those links are likely to be low PR/quality anyway.
I suspect that the negative effects of not receiving back links from some countries (since they can’t access your site) and the messy URL would put the non WordPress sites at a distinct advantage.
The biggest advantage I can see of hosting sites on WordPress.com is that you don’t need to worry about being banned by your host for excessive resource usage. I’m teetering on the brink of my host suspending me for this at the moment and I really don’t want to upgrade to a VPS; with a WordPress.com blog you never need to worry about such problems.
By Jennifer on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
I don’t find the “limitations” you’ve mentioned in your post the least bit problematic, but that’s probably because I’m not a power blogger.
As I wrote on my WP.com blog’s “About” page, I gave up blogging on a self-hosted wp install to blog at WP.com. I was very glad to stop dealing with the mechanics of maintaining a blog, even though I know how, and just get blogging.
By Rokwan on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
Hey Miriam,
Isn’t it true that almost everyone in the world hosts their content on someone else’s property? Sure, you can run your own server in your home, but that is actually tremendously difficult. Pretty positive Wordpres.com doesn’t claim rights to content they host in commercial accounts — wonder how the NYTimes would feel about that?
Also, updgrading — which is absolutely critical — is difficult. That’s actually an advantage for Wordpress.
That said, I am in agreeance with your post — WP.com takes away control, not just of plugins but also of your CSS file (well, they make you pay for it). They also take away control of your theme files, which makes it difficult to develop custom functionality.
You might way, who cares, it’s just a blog, and I need to worry about blogging. Amen to that. But, it’s more — it’s an incredible CMS because of what it *doesn’t* have: all the bloated junk that makes Drupal, Plone and Joomla pale in comparison. So, we need a hosting solution that offers upgraded, stable, *customizable* WP installs. One that supports more than just simple blogs. It’s gonna cost ya more than just $10/month, but could be a good return on your investment.
By Malte Landwehr on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
5. They don’t like SEO blogs.
6. You cannot earn as much money as with a self hosted blog (if any).
By Miriam Schwab on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
@ Netty Gritty - Those are definitely pluses of being on WP.com. I know that there are benefits, but I just think that people should be aware of the cons as well so that they can make an educated decision.
@Ryan - the guys who told me the thing about WP.com and SEO are from a really big and legit SEO company here in Israel, so I believe that they know what they’re talking about. But the negatives of being blocked in certain countries etc. are pretty serious. As for your hosting - I can’t believe that you’re reaching your limit! What hosting provider are you using? I have 6 sites on one hosting plan and I’m not even close to reaching my limit!
@Jennifer - for those who are looking to blog with very little stress, WP.com is really a good solution.
@Malte - those are really good points that are definitely important to know about!
By Ryan on Apr 17, 2008 | Reply
I’m currently using Hostgator, but I’m considering adding a VPS with HostV or SliceHost.
I have about seven sites too. Three of which get almost no traffic. The other four receive a decent amount of traffic though. I am receiving around 13,000 uniques/month and about 200,000 page views in total. Those numbers are increasing each month. Almost all of that traffic is from database driven sites using WordPress or SMF. Plus I get the occasional traffic spike, for example the other weekend I got 2000 uniques in one day.
I got Hostgator to look up my CPU usage a while ago and I was at 14%. The maximum I’m allowed to use is 25%. My traffic has increased by around 40% since then, so I assume I’m on the verge of being suspended. If they’d checked my CPU usage on the day I received 2000 uniques I suspect they would have suspended me for excessive use pretty quick.
From the rough estimates I’ve received, most shared hosting accounts struggle to handle more than 7000 uniques/month for a database driven site and 20,000 uniques for a static site, although that obviously varies wildly depending on your host, whether they notice how much resources you are using and how resource hungry your pages are.
By subcorpus on Apr 20, 2008 | Reply
hostgator eh ???
gonna check them out now …
was thinking of moving my blog when my account expires with my current host …
thanks for sharing …
By Miriam Schwab on Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
@ryan - I use Hostgator for some sites, and Bluehost for this and a few others. Bluehost is going down way too often lately. As for how many uniques a shared hosting service can handle - I don’t like to disclose my traffic stats, but this site gets almost 12,000 uniques a month (shhh, don’t tell anybody) and Bluehost doesn’t complain. We’ll see how far I can go.
By Miriam Schwab on Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
@Rokwam - you’re right about us all running our sites on other people’s servers, and recent events with certain sites being shut down by their providers strengthens your point. But you still have a lot more control over your site when it’s sitting on “your” server, plus the content is totally yours and can be moved to other servers pretty easily. I just don’t like getting tied into content services where my activity is not really mine, if you know what I mean.
As for the benefits of WP.com, like easy upgrading - you are right. These are huge advantages, and that is why WP.com is a great solution for many people.
If you find a good blogging hosting solution, let me know. It’s a good point, and I think that someone needs to provide a hosting solution that takes the frequency of blogging and the possibility of getting “dugg” into account.
By Ryan on Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
Wow, that “secret” number is useful to know. I’ve found that getting information about this type of stuff is quite difficult.
Good to hear you can process that much traffic on a teeny account.
By Miriam Schwab on Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
@Ryan - I know. What’s amazing is that according to the offerings made by these hosting providers, the accounts aren’t that teeny. You know, gazillions of terabytes of bandwidth, bazillions of gigabites of disk space, etc. The crazy thing is that the accounts rarely can handle these numbers. It seems like it’s one big farce.
By Ryan on Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
Even weirder, is that the reseller accounts on some of these hosting providers often don’t allow for any more server usage than their single accounts. From what I understand, Hostgator’s reseller accounts don’t offer any more resources than their regular shared accounts, yet they expect people to use them for running their online hosting companies.
I’ve never seen this sort of advertising here in New Zealand. I suspect if anyone tried it, they’d land themselves in a whole pile of poo with our commerce commission for not outlining the limitations of the hosting package first. We have much stricter rules on this type of thing than the likes of the USA (where most websites are hosted) and we don’t need to go to the hassle of suing anyone just to teach a company a lesson.
By maks on Apr 29, 2008 | Reply
Hello! I like your site! Reader from Russia…