Mister Bump UK

Exploits

I also wrote this post to satisfy Fandango’s One Word Challenge (FOWC), of 4 October, 2020, laugh.

Would you like to hear what I’ve been up to?

Before I was ill, I rented some space on the web. It hosted my business’s site, a personal site and all my emails. After I closed the company, I kept the rental up – I still use my email and keep a small personal site there. But I don’t use the rental space to anywhere near the extent that I used to.

So, just for a laugh, this morning I installed WordPress in my rental space.

The core WordPress app is built by wordpress.org. It is free to all. You can install any number of themes and plug-ins.

wordpress.com is a hosting service. They take the core package and add various bells and whistles onto it, then sell it to us. They restrict what themes we can use, whether we can use plug-ins etc.

I wanted to install the core package for myself, just to see the difference between the two offerings. So now I can look at them at my leisure.

I saw some things immediately.

All site administration of the core site (.org) is via /wp-admin. I used to think this was an “old” interface, but it is the only way of interacting with the core app. All the screens we use to view media, posts, settings are some of the bells and whistles added by .com.

The .org site doesn’t come with some of the plug-ins we take for granted. Akismet and Jetpack are the two I noticed so far. (Jetpack is actually written by the .com guys). I mean, you can install them both yourself – not difficult, but not done for you.

As for Themes, I just used the same theme on my new install (Twenty Sixteen). When I customized it, I noticed that .com had more widgets available. More bells and whistles.

One thing which did strike me when I was looking at the plug-ins:

I’m not part of this classic vs block argument. I’ve been happily using blocks since I started so I’m not affected. But the first thing I noticed on .org was that there is a plug-in called “classic editor”. Because I never used the classic, I don’t know exactly what this plug-in is, but the name registered.

Another reasons for installing my own WordPress was that I might one day go that route myself. To do that, I wanted to be sure that .com users could still like and comment without having to log in again. The jury’s still out, although there is a JetPack setting which makes it sound possible somehow.

But for all you people hating .com for removing the classic editor, maybe self-hosting might offer some path to still remain a part of the community, but to use the editor you like?

20 comments

  2. Curious. I’m still learning WP-ish stuff, and very much a novice here. I came to write, not to web-manage. To date I’m not happy with the way my time is split between the two. I have ideas of what I’d like to do with my pages, but find myself working far too much to beat WP into doing anything near what I want. I’ll be watching for more insight. Thanks.

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    • My first question a year ago was “wtf is WP?” So I probably started in the same-ish place. Then I found out about wp.org, who produce this free, open-source CMS, and wp.com, who have built onto it and sell it. Today was the first time I installed the open-source package.
      I spent a lot of effort getting the design how I wanted it, but hardly go there now – for me it is mainly now about content.

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    • No, they don’t actually sell anything, so I’m not sure where all their revenue comes from. wp.com do all the selling. .org and .com have common ancestors but I believe they’re very different now.

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  8. Hi all, i am struggling to start with WordPress.org firstly i couldn’t find any mobile app for it, secondly was not able to connect .com with org had to ppen with new name, email id.can anyone help

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