When people are talking about WordPress, they may be talking about wordpress.com which is the remotely hosted version of WordPress that’s free or wordpress.org which is the self-hosted version of WordPress which is also free but it costs you money to host that site on a webhost such as HostGator or BlueHost. If you’re deciding betweeen your remotely hosted site like wordpress.com or remotely hosted like wordpress.org, you should definitely be self-hosted because when you’re self-hosted, you have control. You don’t get your site banned for no reason. You have customization. You can do anything you want with the site and you have migration. You can put the site anywhere you want and you don’t have to worry about it going anywhere.
The big problem with sites such as Google, YouTube, Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, and others is that someone else is in control. If you get reported for spam or for terms of violation, even if you’ve done nothing wrong, some of these services will delete your account for no reason, with no checking up on you to see if you actually are at a fault.
It doesn’t make any sense for you to spend thousands of dollars on traffic or to spend hundreds of hours on content to set up a site that might be deleted at a flick of the switch. If you’re serious about building a site, spend the $10 a month with HostGator. Get a site and set it up your own way because when you set up a site your own way, you can customize what you do. You can install plugins that you never would have been able to use on a regular wordpress.com site. Different plugins to collect email addresses and opt-ins to host video, to run a form, to run a membership site… all the things that the big actual established sites use. So when you host on your own, you can customize it and do anything you want.
And if you ever decide you want to expand out, make more sites, move to a new web host, you can. And when some of these will only host sites that’s very difficult to export your site and to put it up somewhere else.
In addition to all these other reasons, one thing that really scares me about remotely host services as some of their other terms of services, it is exactly stated that they own the copyright on all of your information. In the terms of services, it is exactly stated that they can remove service for any reason that they choose, including no reason whatsoever.
I would say don’t risk it, host your own site. Don’t use Blogger. Don’t use WordPress.com. Get your own web hosting account at HostGator or BlueHost. Download wordpress.org and use that as the platform for your website, your sales letter, your blog, and your membership site right now.
Go to http://backupcreator.com/bc/?e=joshua shoemaker to back up, clone, and secure your WordPress site right now before anything happens to them.
