Wordpress.org vs Wordpress.com

You might be wondering why i am blogging about WordPress when i am in Blogger blogging? Well, before i open an account in Blogger, i was considering on where to open an account for my weblog. After researching numerous weblog software (also called blog software or blogware), my choices was narrowed to down to 3; Google Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal.

With many raves about Wordpress on how easy it is to start blogging, naturally i chose Wordpress over the other 2. I am not going to compare these 3 blogware cause it is out of the topic but instead i am going to compare the 2 difference WordPress blogware.

I am sure many people does not know or aware that there is a difference between this 2 blogware WordPress.com and WordPress.org or knew that it existed. Apart from the difference from the suffixes, it is actually a different program. Before this the WordPress i've opened an account for is WordPress.com. I was only aware of the difference after the WordPress Codex information and tutorial could not be done in WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is actually a open source blogging software which is free for anyone to download. It requires you to download the software and to be installed first before being able to use it. There is a number of pre-requisite that needed to be fulfilled (i.e. Install database) and you would need to find a suitable web hosting to host the software which may not come free. The benefit of using WordPress.org is that the copy is sitting on your own server and you can personalize and customize your blog to however your heart desires (i.e. install plugins, themes, layout and etc).

WordPress.com is a free of charge weblog hosting site powered by WordPress software. For a blogger that do not have the time and money to install and acquire a server to host WordPress, the alternative is to use WordPress.com. The difference in WordPress.com is that some of the functionalities of the WordPress is disabled / removed and there might be charges in the future to re-enable back the functionalities (i.e. Plugins).