You know for the longest time I had the trouble in distinguishing between both WordPress platforms.
I know I am not the only one who has had this trouble, I mean how could I?
There are over 6 billion people on the planet and at some point in time, if you have worked with these platforms, you have come across this dilemma.
No more I say lol.
Seriously, it’s actually quite a simple answer which probably won’t require a long explanation.
What I want to leave you with is a good understanding of what the differences are and how they can help you in your development as a front end web developer.
This should allow you to explain to customers and clients which platform will work best for their needs, or your personal needs.
What is WordPress?
Before we begin let us start with the basics and give a general overview of what the foundation of these platforms are.
First and foremost WordPress is an open source content management system to help build websites and blogs online.
Open source simply means that it is a community driven software program that allows modifications and updates from the community to enhance the platform.
What WordPress did was give the average user the capability to build an online presence without the knowledge of knowing how to code.
This opened the doors to the majority to create businesses without having to pay the overwhelming price of a developer to create a site.
Now if you do know how to code that does help in your design…
but it is not necessarily needed as there are so many resources that help to streamline the process of the creating a website.
Ok now that you have an idea of what WordPress is and how it opened the door for many to create their own site, let’s get into some of the differences that come along with this CMS (Content Management System).
Oh by the way a CMS is just a way to help keep and create the structure of your site and all its data.
It creates an easy to navigate interface for users.
The Differences: WordPress.com
You know as I write this I wonder which platform was created first?
Let’s see…
Ironically the two are related more like distant cousins, but they have the same family lineage.
Meaning when wordpress.com was created it stemmed from a company called automatic, but runs on the core of WordPress.
So with that being said, though WordPress was built around the idea of blogging; what wordpress.com offers is a free blog hosting solution.
With WordPress.com your domain name would look similar to…
“yoursitename.wordpress.com”.
Along with this free blog hosting service they come with restrictions, but they made it really simple to create and manage your blog postings.
It is a simple interface where they give you a few options of themes to choose from and your primary focus is on writing the blog.
Of course there are free and premium, paid, choices to choose from.
There is not much room in designing the blog site to doing much customization though.
Just add a few images, some content, and continue to write your post.
The focus of wordpress.com is creating content on your blog.
So if you want a platform where all you want to do is blog and not worry too much of the aesthetics and the design, or you might not be that tech savvy…
then WordPress.com is the way to go.
The Differences: WordPress.org
So on to the mother of them all, this is what WordPress is really known for when you hear everyone talking about the well known CMS platform.
WordPress.org is the self hosted publishing platform that supplies around 27% of the internet.
According to whoishostingthis.com that equates to around 172 million sites online that use this platform.
That is a lot of websites. 😲
I know I know you may be wondering what is a self hosting platform.
What this simply breaks down to is that you can install it on your own server or any hosting provider, such as HostGator.
Even more, this format of WordPress allows for a lot more customization to your site.
In other words you can create a fully developed site with all the nooks and crannies. No worries they made sure that blogging wasn’t left out.
I mean how could they, that’s what they are built around.
Downloading and uploading WordPress to your server makes site creation and creating your own website in a sense a breeze.
Mind you, if it is your first time it can be daunting and overwhelming, but with the prebuilt themes and templates and the vast amount of resources available to guide any user adapting to the platform is no problem.
Learn to build a site for your business that represents your brand, or create a site where you want to capture leads and promotes your product.
Maybe you want to create your own online store.
With all the plugins created by the community of developers using WordPress makes it a breeze to get up and going in a matter of a few hours to days.
Developers also get a part to play in this as well.
WordPress is built on PHP so you can be a developer who contribute to creating themes and sell your template as a product for customers to use or you may be available for your services and a client might want you to build a custom website that caters to their business needs.
The possibilities are endless with wordpress.org.
They even have a way where you can create a site with WordPress and React which is called “headless WordPress”.
In other words you can create the front end of your site with React while you use WordPress as the database, but that’s for another time along with studying more on the subject because this topic intrigues me.
So to wrap it up there you have it in a nutshell.
WordPress.com is strictly a blogging platform with a few restrictions, and WordPress.org is a self hosting publishing platform that allows for custom site creation.
I hope that gives you a simple idea of the two and you can implement this knowledge for your future endeavors whether it be for your personal or business use.
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