Matt Mullenweg co-created the “WordPress” software, also founded Automattic, the company that operates WordPress.com.

Open Source – Software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.

Content management system – A system used to manage the content of a website.

Today WordPress is the most popular Content management System on the market – over 60% of market share.

WordPress powers 23.7% of all websites on the internet.

Free hosting & Free WordPress software

Optional – Fee based add-ons and functionality upgrades: premium or business. (i.e custom domain name, pro themes, ecommerce, ad removal, etc)

WordPress is installed and managed for you, including all of the updates, backups, and security.

Fast and easy to set up an account – you can have your own blog up and running within a few minutes – no special knowledge or skills needed.

Easily integrate with social networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)

Great for Blogging, sharing, polling and commenting.

Online support instructions and helpful forums.

You cannot modify the WordPress code.

You cannot add plugins to extent functionality.

Free WordPress software! (remember Open Source)

You’ll need to buy and register a Domain Name.

You’ll need to purchase hosting server space.

You’ll need to access your web server via FTP.

You’ll need to manually install the WordPress Software. (don’t use the one click install that comes with many hosting server packages)

Thousands of free and premium themes. Demo, Preview, Activate.

Currently over 40,000 Plugins to extend website functionality are available. Most plugins are free and ask you to make a donation. Some offer premium upgrades for a fee. More sophisticated and/or theme specific plugins may charge annual fee for support.

You are allowed to modify and customize the code and functionality.

You are responsible for your own maintenance: Backups, Updates and Security.

.COM is a SERVICE (Hosted and maintained WordPress software)

.ORG – is Open source software you download (install on any server, modify and extend to your liking)

WordPress.com is best used for:

Hobby websites, personal blogs, start-ups, testing blog topics and for just learning and experimenting with the basic WordPress dashboard (creating pages and posts). Always start with a free version (you can upgrade at any time or transfer to a self-hosted site later).

WordPress.ORG is best used for

Website developers and people who want to learn or have control over the web development process. Willingness and time to learn the process. You require added functionality, custom design and/or custom applications.

WordPress.com

Themes: In your dashboard, under “Appearance” click  on “themes”. Current and list of available themes will appear. You may filter by All, Premium or Free. Additional filters for most recent etc. Click on theme details – then choose Activate, Preview or Demo.

Plugins: On WordPress.com, some basic plugin functionality is included automatically.  You do not have the option to add additional plugins.

WordPress.ORG

Domain names: Hover

Hosting: Hostgator BlueHost or wp engine

Themes: A few free themes come with the WordPress software install. Thousands of free themes are available here.

Commercial themes: Available for purchase or subscription

Plugins: Stick with highly rated and popular plugins.

File transfer protocol (FTP) – Free:  filezilla-project.org

Text editors:

Windows  – Free: Notepad++

MAC OS – Free: Text Wrangler

FTP and text editor $$$ – Adobe Dreamweaver