WordPress.com no fuss but limited
When I first started my blog I wanted to focus on just that, blogging i.e.. writing posts. I was excited, motivated and wanted to share the knowledge I’ve gained from my career as a Software Engineer. I didn’t want to get too bogged down with the technical side of things so I looked for a platform that was easy to administer. After some searching I decided to go with WordPress.com. The premium plan was $8 a month which to me seemed fairly affordable and more importantly they took care of a lot of the technical stuff (hosting, DNS, Database etc..). The premium plan also had access to themes which is great because I find choosing color/patterns incredibly boring.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com
Time to make a change
After a couple of coding posts I realized I needed a different coding syntax highlighter plugin, the default one provided just didn’t look right to me. It did an okay job but I wanted something with a dark theme. Personally, dark themes just seem to be easier on my eyes, especially after staring at screens for 8+ hours 5 days a week for my day job. Figuring, how hard it could be to update the plugin to a new one, after all there are thousands of plugins available. Then I discovered some very disappointing news, if you want to be able to install plugins you need to upgrade your WordPress account to Business, which costs $25 a month.
That is when I started to realize how limited the premium plan really was. An alternative was needed. Spending $25 a month was just too expensive for what I was planning on using the platform for. This was not a business for me and I never plan on turning it into one, to be honest I don’t really expect to make any money from blogging at all. Blogging was simply something to do that is different from writing code all day.
The Search for Alternatives
I looked at several different hosting providers. Ultimately, I decided to go with Bluehost. Bluehost seemed to offer the easiest setup and took care of installing WordPress for me which was a huge plus. The price is right too for a simple shared plan. It only cost $2.95 per month at the time of writing this and you can get that introductory price for up to 3 years. If you want to check it out here is a link to their site Bluehost.
I decided to stick with WordPress as the blogging framework but will be using the open source version wordpress.org. The open source version gives you access to plugins, now some plugs cost some money but many have free versions which work great for a simple blog like mine. It gives you access to themes again some of them cost money but many are free. It also gives you the ability to edit the code files for the site and themes which I didn’t think I would use but have already utilized this feature a few times to tweak the colors of my theme.
Getting Full Control
Ultimately, the decision to move boiled down the cost of hosting and the increase in freedom that wordpress.org offered. Being able to install any plugin I want, and/or possibly write my own is a huge benefit. To have access to Search Engine Optimization is a plus if I choose to utilize it. Being able to edit my Theme’s code files to make it look exactly how I want has already come in handy. Finally, I can monetize my site if I choose to do so with affiliate links and/or ads. I now have the ability to add Google Analytics to see where my readers are coming from.
I’m not sure exactly where my blogging journey will take me, but I feel good knowing, now that I’ve made the move, there is nothing limiting me from making my blog whatever I want it to be.
Note-
PS- I will be doing another post on what steps I took to actually migrate the blog, the post was a bit more involved than I thought so decided not to include it in this post. So keep checking ProdReadyCode for the next post.