Questions before upgrading

  • Unknown's avatar
    brettcrousef28 · Member ·

    Hi, I was considering taking advantage of the one day only winter 30 deal today, but I came across some information that has me wondering if WordPress.org would be a better option.

    1. Can you clarify what it means that WordPress.com ‘owns’ my content? In what cases may this be of a disadvantage?

    2. For what reasons does WordPress.com terminate or shut down blog sites, as stated in your Terms of Service?

    Thanks,

    ~Brett

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    1. Can you clarify what it means that WordPress.com ‘owns’ my content? In what cases may this be of a disadvantage?

    Where did you see this? None of our documentation or policies says that.

    You own all content you post on WordPress.com, and you can move it away from us or reuse it elsewhere in any way and at any time. By agreeing to our terms of service you give us permission to display your content in places like the Reader and RSS feeds, and for other bloggers to share your content using our Reblog feature, but we claim no ownership over your content.

    2. For what reasons does WordPress.com terminate or shut down blog sites, as stated in your Terms of Service?

    Your question doesn’t make sense, as the terms of service is the reason. Violating those terms can lead to your site being suspended.

    If you want additional information you can look at our user guidelines, but we do not discuss specifics around suspensions in the public forums, as decisions are made on a case-by-case basis by our terms of service team.

    User Guidelines

  • Unknown's avatar
    brettcrousef28 · Member ·

    I was reading this information on outside blogs comparing WordPress.org & .com with links to WordPress pages.

    They made it seem like WordPress can and does remove sites at will.

    Can you please advise me as to why I’d want to choose and invest in WordPress.com vs WordPress.org?

    Thanks

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    They made it seem like WordPress can and does remove sites at will.

    We remove sites that violate our terms of service, and beyond that we remove content from sites if required by a valid court order or a valid DMCA takedown notice. Any reputable hosting provider would do the same.

    Can you please advise me as to why I’d want to choose and invest in WordPress.com vs WordPress.org?

    That depends completely on your needs and technical abilities. On WordPress.com we take care of all software updates, maintenance, security and backups for you, and even on our free plan you have access to support. Additionally your site will never run out of server space (that is space for the actual site, posts, pages, etc, not media files you upload) and we don’t have any bandwidth caps.

    With a self-hosted site you have more freedom to customize your site, as you can install any plugin or theme (only possible on WordPress.com with the Business Plan), and you can even edit the code of the site directly (not possible on WordPress.com at all). The trade-off is if you break your site you need to fix it yourself, which may involve manually editing code in some cases. If it gets hacked you need to restore your own backups, and if you didn’t make backups you start over from scratch – most backup and security services have very limited free service and for anything truly useful you have to pay. Unless you pay for a top-end hosting plan, your hosting won’t provide any support for the WordPress software itself, so if something goes wrong the only option is the WordPress community forums on WordPress.org or paying for third-party support. Server space and bandwidth caps depend on your hosting plan, with many hosts charging penalty fees if you exceed those.

    If you need the full customization freedom a self-hosted site offers these costs may be worth it for you. But it depends on what you need and how involved you want to get in the technical aspects of running a website.

  • Unknown's avatar
    brettcrousef28 · Member ·

    Thanks, that info was exactly what I needed. I went with WordPress.com premium, and will look into .org when I have more time for the technical aspects.

    Thanks again!

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Happy to help :)

    I see you’ve already found live chat support as well. You’re welcome to contact us there any time you need help with your site.

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