photo credit: Nikolay Bachiyski

An honest opinion? Wordpress.org.

Wordpress.com has various pro’s and con’s of which will be covered in this post. Many of the negatives of wordpress.com do not exist when you choose wordpress.org as your solution.

In a nutshell, wordpress.com is a hosted solution wheras wordpress.org is a blog you own, you install and you run on your own hosting.

Wordpress.com Pro’s

1. Free reliable hosting environment.
2. Integration with wordpress.com.
3. Seemless integration between blogs.
4. One account to manage multiple blogs.
5. Own subdomain / domain.

Wordpress.com Con’s

1. Appears to be very commercialized.
2. Styles are limited as are plugins.
3. Must obey Wordpress.com Terms and Conditions.
4. You dont own the traffic.
5. Limited marketing, improvements, adjustments.

With wordpress.org offering a downloadable archive for you to install on your webserver you can customise every single aspect of the blog, from marketing, tracking, adverts, plugins, code adjustments - you name it - you can change it.  You, as the webmaster are responsible for keeping the software up to date (bug fixes, security enhancements etc…), whereas this is done for you on wordpress.com.

If you are looking for a simple solution for a fun blog where you are not worries about advanced tracking, making money etc… then wordpress.com is for you.  If you are thinking of making an official, proffesional blog where you need advanced features that wordpress.com does not offer, use wordpress.org - your own hosted solution.