Leaving WordPress.com
No, this is not an announcement that I am abandoning my little piece of WordPress.com. It is a thought or two about the assumption that WordPress.com will provide a subset of WordPress. In particular, while one’s own installation of WordPress allows an incredible amount of tailoring with regard to themes, plugins, etc., WordPress.com will not.
I previously referred to WordPress.com as a “gateway drug.” Well, what happens when someone has got hooked on WordPress via their free WordPress.com blog, and feels it’s time to get their own place? In other words, they are willing to do some of the work previously done by site admin in order to have full access to the flexiblity of WordPress.
My main point is that the way out of WordPress.com should be well signposted. There should be very clear and explicit instructions as to how to export from one’s WordPress.com blog and import in to one’s new site.
That new site might not be free. In fact, the “exit package” might include pointers to recommended hosts. This part of the package might look similar to the WordPress.org hosting page. As the page points out, some of these hosts have already shown willingness to give some of the hosting fees back to WordPress development.
Hey, this “first one’s free, kid” approach to blog hosting is looking better all the time…
I saw in your other post that you have an invite? I’m currently stuck with Xanga as my blog, and it sucks. You can’t do anything with Xanga. Can you please send me an invite?
Sorry, the one WordPress.com invite I had to give away has gone.
A ‘fee’ on exporting your blog account to somewhere else? Isn’t that too far fetched? I mean, most of the people who has a blog in WP is already a blogger before (and they have a working blog before they tried WP.com).
Oskar,
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t suggesting that one would have to pay to take one’s blog from WordPress.com to, for example, Dreamhost. I am suggesting that: bloggers who have come to like WordPress via wp.com might want to have access to all the flexibility of WordPress (choose one’s own plugins, design one’s own theme, etc.); they might go to a paid hosting service; and that the paid service might look kindly on wp.com for a referral.
Sorry if it sounded as though I was suggesting that WordPress.com take blogs hostage. I am sure that this will not happen.