Websites and Blogs: Jumping From the Frying Pan Into the Fire

I spoke to a business owner whose hosted website was on Blogger. She was very pleased that she was starting a new website on WordPress.

I asked her what the the URL of her new site was. She told me — and it included wordpress.com

"You're getting another hosted site," I explained to her. "That's WordPress.com. You're not getting the self-hosted WordPress site that is built on WordPress.org."



"There are two WordPress?" she asked. "Yes," I said, "and it is very confusing."

Recently Yael and I were contacted by someone who had decided to build her husband's self-hosted WordPress site herself using one of the StudioPress themes. Now we recommend these themes, but they are not easy to setup. The woman emailed us that the tutorial videos were not for beginners. And she's right.

For people who do want to install WordPress.org themselves, Yael provided instructions in her guest post for BookBuzzr.com titled "If You Have a Book You Need a Website (You Can Update Yourself)":

If you want to install WordPress yourself, here are the written instructions from WordPress.

Even though old and the video quality isn't the greatest, these videos (should) still be correct:

Create A WordPress Blog From Scratch – Part 1 to 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The only difference is that now you can pick the admin username. For security reasons, don't use "admin."

In conclusion, be careful you don't fall into the hosted trap by not knowing the difference between a WordPress.com hosted site and a WordPress.org (usually written just as WordPress) self-hosted site.

And if you're a book author, read Yael's entire guest post now.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are the co-founders of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC. They also build self-hosted WordPress websites for clients.