If you are considering learning about the blogs, then WordPress.com may seem as a wonderful idea due to just one reason – it is available for free. But, if you are really serious concerning your professional or personal branding, and you understand what you are about to share with the whole planet, you require being serious regarding how you select your platform. Today, blogging and WordPress are nearly synonyms. Whenever you seek blogging in search engines, you will finish up finding plenty of blogs made in WordPress. And that’s really amazing! WordPress is quite famous platform on the web for content marketers and bloggers. But, there are several restrictions with WordPress.com and the same are mentioned below –
Reasons To avoid Using WordPress.com
If you are not creating a blog for making money, then it’s ok to use WordPress.com. In fact, you may be more affluent being with them as you would not need to tackle any sort of technical stuff of your blog. However, if you are really serious about your blog and you want to build a brand for earning money, then you need to take a look at some drawbacks of employing WordPress.com as your blogging platform.
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You Are Limited To make use of a Theme They Approve
When you are about to create a website for your business or your personal use, you surely want your site to have its own feel and look. If not unique completely, you wish to have a total control over how your site look. Initially, WordPress.com enables you to pick a theme from their collection. This implies that your site will have to look exactly like one of those millions of sites that are employing the similar themes.
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You Just Get 3GB Of Storage Space For Free
You just receive 3 GB of storage space without any cost when you register yourself for a blog or website at WordPress.com. Initially, it may seem like a lot when you have not begun blogging however if you actually consider it, as soon as you upload some PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, documents, and images, you will notice that you are short in space. Here, the most important point to note is that, without the required space, you’re not permitted to upload more files and documents on your blog. This implies that, if you are considering audio podcast or simply sharing some of the audio files via your blog or site, space upgrade is necessary. And that implies that, you’ll need to pay extra money for space upgrade which may cost you nearly 20 dollars annually for 10GB space.
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Theme-Customizations Are Restricted even though You Pay
WordPress.com does permit you for account upgrade to customize the look and feel of your theme simply by changing your fonts and make use of your individual set of CSS for further styling. This feature is accessible for you if you further spend 30 dollars per year. But, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be permitted to edit the layout of your theme as per your taste. For instance, if you wish to change the position of one of the elements of your site which needs the theme files to be edited, WordPress.com doesn’t permit you to change the fundamental arrangement of any of their themes.
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You’re Not Permitted To Use JavaScript
Whenever you develop your blog, you will require JavaScript. For instance, you may wish to have a balanced social sharing or possibly you wish to employ a small snippet of JavaScript to add pop-up on your website. But, guess what, JavaScript is not allowed to use at WordPress.com. Hence, it doesn’t matter how badly you want to include those exceptional features on your website or blog, you simply can’t. Have you heard about email opt-in forms facility like Aweber? Since JavaScript is not allowed at wordpress powered website, you cannot employ them. You will require finding an optional method to finish the task which is not very cool though you may be spending nearly 20 dollars per month for those services. According to WordPress.com, you have to get your required forms outside of your website and then just link them into your site.
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They Can Transform the Theme of Your Blog Without Your Consent
If WordPress.com admin find out that the theme you’ve been employing is not beneficial for whatever reasons, they’ll simply delete your theme without asking your consent and transform it to anything else. The same thing has happened to many people and you should be aware of this possibility.
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WordPress.com May Run Advertisements On Your Blog/Site Unless You Pay Them
Don’t every consider WordPress.com as a free platform. This may be your biggest mistake. They keep all the right to show advertisements on your website/blog. But, they do permit you to pay an additional amount of 30 USD annually and then they’ll enable you to keep your blog or site ad-free. Even after that, you have to keep some copyright links for example, Blog at WordPress.com on your website. All the bloggers at WordPress.com are needed to upkeep the credit links as needed by their service regulations.
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You Won’t Be Capable To Use Famous Analytics Tools
Because you cannot make use of JavaScript, you’ll not be capable to apply Google Analytics or any famous analytics services accessible. The majority of analytics software requires you to set up a snippet of code into your theme files and as that’s not permitted at WordPress.com; you won’t be capable to employ any such software on your website or blog. Well, you may not know the significance of employing a state-of-the-art analytics presently. But, believe us, when you develop your blog, you will be unhappy to have your site at WordPress.com, if you are unable to employ Google Analytics.
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Affiliate Links Are Permitted But Very Limiting
If you want to earn money by placing some effective affiliate links on your website, you certainly want to excuse yourself from WordPress.com as you may finish up in problem. But, making money is not your goal then this may not be an appropriate reason to stay away from WordPress.com.
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You Can’t Run Advertisements On WordPress.com Powered Website or Blog
They don’t permit third-party advertising networks such as Vibrant Media, BuySellAds, Lijit, OpenX, and Google AdSense or banner image ads at WordPress.com platform. But, they may enable you to sell out advertisements on your website when you’ve a considerably increased traffic condition with your blog (anything like 25,000 pageviews monthly). But, for this you will need to apply for this program, commonly called as WordAds. And after that, they’ll tell you to share your profit with them. You don’t want it, do you?
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You Will Have to Be A VIP-Member For Using Custom Plugins
WordPress is known due to its strengths with a number of powerful plugins. There are over 30 millions WordPress plugins and the number keeps increasing. For instance, you may want to limit the number of attempts anyone can try to sign in to your site and if you have a self-hosted website, then you will just set up a free plugin, that’s it. However, for the purpose of security, you are not permitted to make use of third-party plugins if you’re hosting your blog/site on WordPress.com for free. But, despite this limitation for free-members, when you upgrade your WordPress account to become a VIP member at this platform by spending $3,750 monthly, they will permit you to set up custom plugins. This is really a great feature. But, the money they cost is too big for loads of people. Such people will rather appoint their own dedicated web server; appoint a full-time website developer and that too by spending less than $3750 to get better control over their site.
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They Won’t Provide You Any Email Space
When you make use of WordPress.com, you won’t get any storage space or a means to set up your custom e-mail with your domain that you normally get if you have a self-hosted blog or website. Each and every shared-hosting service providers provide you with loads of storage space as well as email addresses to set up your domain-name when you start hosting your site with them. But, the same will not be true when you choose WordPress.com. Still, you will be relied on your Hotmail/ Yahoo/ Gmail accounts for email access and clearly that is not professional at all.
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They Can Close or Terminate your WordPress Blog-Site At Any Time
Just imagine that you have this possibility after experiencing everything we have discussed already. Their terms and conditions clearly says that WordPress.com reserve the rights to stop your access to any part or all parts of your blog/site at any time, without or with notice, without or with reason, effective immediately. Maybe unknowingly or unintentionally, if you breach any of their rules, you risk losing the blog or website. You would not want to take that chance with your intellect, energy, and time. Just imagine that you have spend a lot of your money on any of the unique features that they offer in return of money. You will certainly feel bad when something like this takes place.
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WordPress is susceptible to being hacked
WordPress.com is an open source platform, which implies that it is free , however being the famous entity can really imply that it’s prone to be hacked.
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You Can’t Change Page Structure
With WordPress, you have the freedom to change stuff in the page body, however you do not have the freedom to directly access HTML source of your page. Also, you don’t have rights to access PHP files. This also implies that you cannot add JavaScript or CSS links into your website page like you usually do. It is less customizable plus you have less control over your site. If you add any sort of JavaScript code in the body of the web page, it will get eliminated when you update the web page. Are you planning to embed an <iframe> from other website as a workaround? Well, it will not work. WordPress.com has a complete list of external websites it permits connections to plus possibilities are your website isn’t one of them.
Final Thoughts
WordPress is a platform. It permits expert developers and professional web designers to build and create websites and blogs. Similar to a mechanic, you can choose the appropriate tool for your job. Sometimes it is suggested a client makes use of something else, and sometimes, clients are referred to other experts employing optional platforms for website design and development. Whether WordPress is right for you or not, it is basically depends on why you want to build a site, what your site requires doing, what are your business objectives and how your site etc.
