One of the most confusing things about WordPress is that there are two versions. We’ve got the wordpress.com version and the self-hosted version (which many incorrectly) refer to as the “wordpress.org” version.
I clear up the differences and let you know that this course is geared for users of the full featured self-hosted version.
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Transcript Of This Video
Hello, my name is Bud Kraus. Before we begin with the WP A to Z series, let me clear up something that’s been the source of confusion to many people over the years. Yes, there are two versions of WordPress. They’re very similar, but their differences are really important. So, here we are at the WordPress.com site. What’s good about it is you just come here, open an account, and you can start creating your website for free. Let’s take a look at some of the plans they have. In fact, there are four different plans they have, and here they are now.
I like the free one the best, but it’s the most limited in terms of what you can do. All the way over here to the newly revised business plan, which costs about $300 dollars a year. I know you can do much better than that. By that I mean if you’ll use the second version, the self-hosted version, I think you’re going to get much happier results.
The big differences between WordPress.com and the self-hosted version of WordPress– I’ll get into that in detail in a second, but it’s that you can’t install any plugin or any theme for your site. Your choices for customization are restricted. But if you use the business plan, it looks like you can now install any theme or any plugin.
What’s a plugin? A plugin is what you use to extend what WordPress does by default. It’s a lot like what an app, which you’ll find on a cell phone or a tablet, and a theme is responsible for the look and feel of your website. I get into a lot of detail on plugins and themes in the modules that I have for those subjects in this course.
Let’s take a look at the second version, and that’s the WordPress.org version– As some people call it. I don’t really like that because it’s misleading. Because you can’t come to this website and make your website. No, you come to this website for information about WordPress. I call it “The mothership of WordPress,” in that it’s the authoritative source of all things WordPress and you can also come here to get software. What do I mean? If we go over here to themes, you’ll see that you can download and use any one of these themes, and there’s about 5,000 free themes here.
Yes, everything at WordPress.org is free. How good is that? As well as you can get plugins. They currently have only 50,000 free plugins to choose from. This is not the only place to get themes and plugins on the internet, for sure for WordPress, but it’s a really good place to start with.
Now, one of the things about this version of WordPress is that it does require that you have a web hosting account or web hosting service for your WordPress site. There are thousands of web hosting companies to choose from, and I’ll get into that in my sixth module, which is all about web hosting.
