What’s the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org?

Wordpress.com is a free blog platform, hosted by WordPress. You can have a totally free blog as a subdomain on their server. Your blog’s URL would be xxxxxx.wordpress.com where xxxxxx is your chosen username. The advantage is that it’s free and you have a wide choice of themes (designs) and blogging tools that you can choose from. The disadvantage is that you can’t monetize it: they don’t allow you to put Adsense on it and they can close you down if you have money-making or business links on your blog. And another downside is that you don’t own the blog - they do. They can remove your blog at will if you do something that is against their terms of service.

WordPress.org is the self-hosted version of WordPress. The software driving the blog is free but you have to pay for a domain and hosting service. This doesn’t cost megabucks and is essential if you are running any sort of business. The advantage of this is that the blog URL is your own domain that you registered. And you can pretty much do what you like on your blog: have Adsense, sell your own product(s), have affiliate links, plugins, banners, whatever you like. You own the blog - it’s your property and you could even sell it.

What’s the best way to learn WordPress?

As with anything unfamiliar, the best way to start learning WordPress is to start simple.

If you are starting from absolutely Square One then don’t expect to leap straight into Square Nine! On the contrary, start at the beginning and progress step by step, one step at a time.

If you are a newbie, or you have no prior blogging experience, you might find the first two or three steps to be quite a steep learning curve. But the good news is that the curve soon flattens out and you begin, quite quickly, to ‘get it’. Just stick with the first few unfamiliar steps and you’ll soon be up and running.

Trust me, once you become familiar with the WordPress environment you’ll find it easy to explore and experiment and find your own way round.

If you have big ambitions about your blog, particularly if you want to use your blog to make money, you should be planning to go the WordPress.org route where you hang your blog on your own domain.

But, use the WordPress.com free blogging option as your practice ground. Learn the ropes first: practice, experiment and learn. Then when you’re comfortable with WordPress.com, then you can upgrade to WordPress.org.

Ready to begin? Check out my free WordPress tutorial to get you started on WordPress.com now!