WordPress
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com
WordPress comes in two flavors: the fully hosted WordPress.com, and the self-hosted version, whose software is available for free at WordPress.org.
Our preference is to work with the self hosted version, as it gives us more flexibility, but we can do it either way. We’ve been working with WordPress since 2007, and almost exclusively in the last six years.
WordPress.org
Free to download, and easy for us to install on your server account.
Over 10,000 themes (aka templates) available.
Tons of plugins (59,928 as of 12/17/2022), most of them free which allow you to do all kinds of things.
It’s the most popular CMS in the world, and as such many users already have experience with it, and it’s not hard to find developers if for some reason we part ways.
WordPress.com
Hosted by WordPress, and free to use.
100’s of themes available.
They provide certain functionality, but you can not extend it in any way.
Your WordPress.com site comes with a free address, like www.example.wordpress.com.
But most want their own domain name, and need to customize the site, all of which is at extra expense.
WordPress.com is a commercial enterprise owned by Automattic, a company started by the founding developer of WordPress and staffed by full-time developers, designers, and support engineers. Automatticians (employees of Automattic) regularly contribute back to the WordPress.org software so that the entire community can benefit.
Is it a blog, or a website?
WordPress started out in 2003 mostly as blogging software. But through the years they made it so you can have pages, more like a website, or a combination of the two. As an example, this website is mostly a number of pages (what most think of as a website), but then there is a blog section too.