TapLead Internet Marketing Magazine
I see it all over Twitter. What should I use for my website. Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger? I have even seen Weebly thrown in there.
Well, I have an answer for you. Buy maybe not what you are thinking. None of the above. Kind of.
Most people know about WordPress.com, but don’t know what WordPress.org is. They are almost the same thing except, with WordPress.org you install the files onto your own server. It only takes about 30 seconds to install and only about $4 per month.
Why WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com?
When you host the WordPress files on your own server, you pretty much take ownership of your site. You also open up access to a huge variety of premier tools that you can use to get more traffic and build a following. Don’t get me wrong, I do like WordPress.com and even Blogger, Tumblr, and Weebly for that matter, but when you commit to anything besides WordPress.org, you are locking yourself in a box for the future growth of your website.
With “self-hosted” WordPress, you get access to premium theme developers at StudioPress with the Copyblogger team and Brian Gardner and ThemeForest and the ability to change take your site anywhere you want in the future when it comes to time-saving plugins and shortcuts. (StudioPress does a few themes that work on WordPress.com) WordPress is now reported to run 22% of the websites online (.com and .org) and with that many users comes a huge development community eager to make your site easier and more powerful.
WordPress Plugins To Power Up Your Site
Let me give you some examples of what you can use with your new wordpress site that are unavailable with the other options.
You can use wishlist Member, developed by Stu McLaren and team, to turn your website into an easy to run membership website where you can give members or paying members access to premium content. This is great for being able to segment and control your content for different users.
If you want to create landing pages and squeeze pages, you can easily install a plugin called Premise that allows you to control that way your page look on a page by page basis. You can hide the navigation bar, hide the header, change the header, hide the sidebars, add custom graphics and webforms and more with Premise. It was developed by the CopyBlogger team and Brian Clark.
You can set up another installation of wordpress and run an entire theme that is set up for product launches, squeeze pages, and landing pages called OptimizePress.
If you want to automate things on your site a bit (with careful consideration) you can use WProbot to add feeds and videos to your site automatically. (Don’t add duplicate content to your website) . You could use this to initiate content and then add your own unique content to it as well.
These are just a few examples of what you are missing out on when it comes to Tumblr, Blogger, Weebly, and WordPress.com installations.
Verdict of WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger
WordPress wins for sure. I have used all of them and found that anything but a self-hosted site will find most people feeling boxed in after a while and they might not give you the flexibility that you want or need. Just pick up your own hosting pack at Hostgator and you will be off and running quickly. If you need help, check out http://wpthink.com for video tutorials on setting up your own WordPress install.
If you have any other questions on the subject, enter them in the comments section below and we would be happy to help.
Hello Ben,
I was wondering if you would use wordpress for an e-commerce site as well?
Yes, there are some great ecommerce plugins that you can use with WordPress to turn it into a full ecommerce site. Check out http://getshopped.org