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In this episode, we discuss which WordPress best to use for your online business.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Hostgator – our choice for web hosting
- WordPress.org – for self-hosting
- WordPress.com – for free hosting
- CoachXO.com – my site!
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: He y’all! You’re listening to the Q&A of S&J.
SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? Let’s get started.
JOCELYN: Thanks for joining us. Today’s question is from Bill Clancy and Bill says:
“You recommend using WordPress to start a website – Do you mean WordPress.org or WordPress.com or does it matter? These appear to be two very different products from the same company. Which one do you use and why?”
SHANE: That’s a great question. We get that a lot. When people look at building websites the first thing they do is go to WordPress and all of a sudden they see these two options. WordPress is basically a platform that allows you to organize content and create ways to display that content which is a website. There are two ways to use that.
First is WordPress.com – it’s like free hosting, you basically get to use them on their platform and you can create a website for free but the problem is you’re going to be limited regarding the functionality of WordPress.com, you’re not going to have access to all the different plugins you’re going to need, you’re going to be subject to their terms and conditions and your domain name is not going to be exactly what you want, it’s going to look unprofessional.
For example, my website is CoachXO.com and if I had done that on WordPress it would say coachxo.wordpress.com. So basically WordPress.com gives you a free place to start a website but you’re going to be severely limited in the long run when you’re running an online business.
WordPress.org is basically where you download the WordPress software which is open source and free and you can go create your own website at another hosting company. It’s called self-hosting.
You can go to a place like Hostgator.com and you’re going to be able to build your website and do whatever you want. You’re going to be free to install things like Genesis which is a theme in WordPress and create a more robust site. You’re going to have access to tons of plugins like shopping carts and all sorts of things.
So basically WordPress.com is for blogging where you can just start a free website if you want to blog about something. WordPress.org is what you’ll want to use if you want to start an online business and website and the cool thing about hosting companies like Hostgator.com is that they already have WordPress built into them so when you sign up for you hosting which is 10 bucks a month, you’re going to be able to go ahead, click one button and install WordPress so that’s what you’ll want to use when creating a website.
JOCELYN: I think a lot of people think that building a website is very complicated and that’s why they want to start with WordPress.com but the thing about it is that it’s very simple to get your website, domain name and we talked about this on another podcast in the beginning that you use shared hosting like Hostgator or one of those companies and just install WordPress through them and I know that sounds a little tricky or complicate but there are tons of videos online that show you how to do this in 5 minutes and just like Shane said, we definitely recommend being able to scale larger and do other things with your website in the future because you don’t have to backtrack and end up having to pay somebody to convert your website which is a lot more difficult to do than to start out the correct way the first time and we think that wordpress.org is definitely the best option
SHANE: So we definitely recommend using wordpress.org or using shared hosting on Hostgator.com or any other company. Most of them are owned by the same large company anyway and almost all companies have a one-click install for the WordPress software. Thanks for your question and until next time we’ll catch you on the flipside.
Do you need step by step instruction? Do you need us to help you create your digital product and get your online business started? We actually offer a course called the Flip your life e-course where we show you how to create your first digital product in 29 days or less. All you have to do is to get more information on this program is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/FlipYourLife and you can check out everything we do to help you create your digital product for sale online even if you don’t have a website.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show!
If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week!
Glen says
I agree. WordPress.com is too limiting and doesn’t allow you to do simple things or add plug-ins. If you don’t have a blog yet, I recommend WordPress.org. Set up is now very easy and you can get rolling in minutes.
Robert says
You guys are doing some really good work…keep it up! Since the November class is full can I sign up for the January class, and if so how do I sign up? Thanks.