The Return of My Unsolicited Annual Plug for WordPress.com
Posted on October 10, 2011 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
Today marks the third anniversary of Whatever’s association with WordPress.com, via its VIP hosting service, and the best compliment I can think to give WordPress.com in this regard is that it’s been three years since I’ve had to think about whether my blog is up and running. It is, and WordPress.com just works. For someone whose personal level of competence in handling blog software is only slightly above “caffeinated lemur with a hammer,” this is a fine thing indeed.
Aside from placing a modest “Powered by WordPress VIP” badge on my site (you’ll see it in the site’s footer), the folks at WordPress have never asked me to bang the drum for them, but such is my positive experience with them to this point that I am happy to do it annually and without prompting. So: If you’re looking for hosting for your blog, consider WordPress.com; I suspect you’ll be happy with them. I am. If you are a business with a need for a serious Web presence backed by a lot of competent tech folks, consider WordPress VIP; I suspect you’ll find they work as well for you as they do for me.
And there we are!
I migrated here from LiveJournal when they were having a lot of problems and found I like it much better. It works faster and has so many options to choose from. I did “bring” one customer with me: my brother finally started a blog and my enthusiasm for WP persuaded him to use it.
I did leave most of the WP links on my blog so anyone interested can learn more.
Your blog-fu is mighty. It just so happened that I decided yesterday to set up a blog, and I did so last night on WordPress.com, after considering a couple of other options. So even hours before your annual plug, the wave of satisfaction you feel overcame me.
I did find that there were a couple of glitches as I set it up and tried a few test posts. For example, the ability to tag my posts went away for a time but came back after I logged out and logged back in (after spending a lot of time trying to solve the problem using the Help functions and tutorials–and failing). But I’ve heard so much good about WordPress that I’m assuming I will be satisfied. Besides, as a writer who has worked in publishing for years, I like the name.
I am still waiting for the name of the rabbit.
John, when I had to decide which hosting service I would use for my blog, I checked out blogs by many of my favorite writers. Yours was definitely one of the voices that helped me pick WordPress. I’m a rather undemanding blogger, but I’m certainly happy with them.
I’ll echo what duskfire wrote. Your blog is one of the main reasons I chose to blog on WordPress.
I bet, one of my best friends, who is one of the Developers of WordPress would be thrilled by the High Praise:
http://dougal.gunters.org/
Thanks John.
The thing I don’t like about WordPress–and it eventually drove me back to Blogger–is that they don’t allow Javascript. I have a lot of things in my sidebar–lists from Library Thing and Pandora, for instance–that use Javascript, and I couldn’t post them on WordPress.
This makes no sense. Blogger allows Javascript, and it seems none the worse for wear.
I don’t have quite as many readers as you do, but I reliably get a daily readership in the single digits, and I’m content with WordPress. It works for what I want it to do, and it isn’t ugly.
I’ve been using WordPress (.com and .org) since 2005 and have never looked back, or around for another service. WordPress is the best out there.
Cheers,
Aaron
Wow, VIP starts at $2,500 a month. This blog must do well!
AND at least $15,000 / year for support!
I’ve been using WP since you suggested it to me two years. A very user-friendly, useful, sturdy product. Highly recommended.
Note that if you host your blog on wordpress.com, they will show ads on it unless you make special arrangements with them. You won’t usually see them yourself (they don’t currently show them to signed-in or other frequent users). But at least some of your readers will.
When I first saw the ads, they were text-based, and fairly easy to distinguish from my content. Now it’s more common for them to be video, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a clear separation between their ad videos and your own content. (There’s no “advertisement” label that I can see, for instance, so a reader can’t easily tell if you’ve embedded the video or an advertiser has.)
If this is going to be a problem for your blog, as it was for mine, you can pay them $30 a year to not put ads on the site. Which I now do; I figure that not having to handle my own hosting, and to get good comment-spam filtering– much better than Blogger was managing when I tried a blog there– is worth $30 a year to me. I also pay another $17/year to get my own .com domain and map it to the blog. Besides giving me a shorter, more memorable address, it also means I control the URLs, and can, for instance, move the blog from wordpress.com if I later decide to, without links breaking.
So if you do decide to go the wordpress.com route, keep in mind that it may cost you something to get what you want. I pay a lot less than VIP service would cost (for a blog that has orders of magnitude less traffic than Scalzi’s), and I find it worthwhile. Your mileage may vary.
I fast-scanned the title of this post and read it as “Anal” rather than “Annual”. Much internal merriment ensued.