Have you heard of WordPress? No?
Okay, so here’s the deal. There’s WordPress.com, which is what I am reviewing today, and there’s the self-hosted WordPress. I am reviewing WordPress.com, with which you can build a website mighty fast. You can do it all there. You don’t have to be nearly as fancy with your technical savvy as working with the self-hosted version of WordPress.
The self-hosted WordPress framework is widely used by web developers all over the planet. If you aren’t a web designer or web developer, you might want to stay away from the self-hosted version, though I will be reviewing it soon and will talk about the details more there. It is VERY fair to say that you can have a self-hosted WordPress website and not be a nerd. But you have to be careful in how you go about getting your site set up because self-hosted can be super easy or super hard if you aren’t familiar with how it works. You have to have a hosting account that supports WordPress. You have to install WordPress, which can range from the host company doing it for you automatically to you having to do the install using a tool from WordPress.org. So… For now, we will stay just with WordPress.com, which is super easy to get started.
Industry Specific?
Just like everyone else, WordPress.com has themes that you can use for anything, pretty much.
Pricing
WordPress.com is free as long as you are cool with “wordpress” being in your domain name. You can pay for a domain name (currently $13.00/year) and you can have your own domain.
Otherwise, they have a $99/year package and $299/year package.
Mobile?
At WordPress.com, you need to check your theme before you choose your theme. They have a demo page that shows popular themes, free themes, and premium themes. If you see a theme you like, just put your mouse over it and select “Live Demo.” Once you do that, you’ll see the URL of the theme. You can do two things at this point to check it: You can simply decrease/increase the size of your browser window to see if the theme is responsive and you can type the theme’s URL into your phone’s browser and see what it does. The first one I tried out while writing this review was responsive.
In What Browser Does the Website Builder Work?
Pretty much any browser out there works with WordPress’s admin.
Search Engine Optimization?
So here’s the thing about SEO and WordPress.com: I can’t tell if the default version of WordPress.com allows for custom keywords and meta descriptions. I know you will have statistics. I know you will have a sitemap. And you will be able to control the URL of each page. I exclusively use the self-hosted WordPress platform and I exclusively use StudioPress themes for my builds. StudioPress themes allow you to do all the fancy SEO you want to, but many themes don’t. So this is a big “I don’t know” because it doesn’t specifically say. The overall framework for WordPress is extremely SEO friendly, but the custom titles and meta information is very important and I wouldn’t build a site without those features if my client’s plan is to build their business through their website content.
Blog Features?
WordPress began as a blog. It has grown up a lot, but of course still produces a wonderful blog as well as standard website pages.
Ease of Use
This is not a drag and drop tool, but it is super easy to use when you are keeping it simple. WordPress.com tries to get you to keep it simple. For those new to websites, that’s a very, very good thing because the self-hosted WordPress environment allows you to go crazy, and as we all know, if you go crazy with anything in life, it typically gets complicated.
Use Your Own URL?
Yes.
My Initial Impression
I am a big fan of WordPress. For my own purposes, I get frustrated when a client comes to me with a site they built at WordPress.com because it is limited in features in comparison to what I can usually do. However, for someone doing it themselves, this is an excellent solution.
Click here to grab my free download to help you get all your ducks in a row before your build your site.
Even though I made it for people who are getting ready to hire a web pro, 80% of it will help you if you are building your site on your own.
Can you migrate a WordPress.com site to a self-hosted WordPress environment with its own URL?
Yes, you sure can, Jay! If you purchase a Managed WordPress hosting plan, you will probably be given the option to use the plan’s migration tool. It will migrate your site into the new hosting plan. Just have your host walk you through how to use it.