As I am looking to create a more formal, shall we say “professional” web presence, I am learning a few things.
First, while my personal sites (like here) are self hosted, and currently managed by myself on Digital Ocean, I want something where I know that if I screw up I don’t lose it all.
There are plenty of options, but as I am familiar with WordPress, and even got my start on wordpress.com, their hosted solution, I decided to go straight to it as a solution.
I get a lot of benefits for this decision. They handle any security issues, they back up my content, and they keep it all up to date. I have a domain, prodbistro.com, I paid for a year of google apps (to get the email), and it was a simple click, click, click process.
Of course, there are limitations. You can’t add plugins ad hoc. You can’t use themes that you buy elsewhere. You don’t get to add things like Google analytics. Inconvenient, but not fatal.
Of course, I am currently using a free theme, and have tried several of them. They don’t suck, but they are quite limited. I am good while I am building my presence, but I can see myself opening my wallet and buying a premium theme.
There is a benefit of buying one of the wordpress.com premium themes, they host the support, and from browsing the support forums, it looks like the support is quite efficient.
However, my web presence is rising, and I am working on polishing my words, and preparing my offerings.
