wordpress.com vs wordpress.org

jimh

You people that have blogs on Wordpress - are you self-hosting, or using Wordpress.com?

I plan to start simple on Wordpress.com. But would I be wasting my time there? If I ever decide I need the flexibility of the self-hosted version, will any of my Wordpress.com content be portable?

Hikin' Mike

My main website is the self-hosting version (.org). I created a subdomain for my SmugMug. You have more flexibility going the self-host version. In your case I would create a subdomain and install WordPress on your own domain. I would never use '.com' because the content you create is not on your domain.

Hikin' Mike

@jimh said:
I plan to start simple on Wordpress.com. But would I be wasting my time there? If I ever decide I need the flexibility of the self-hosted version, will any of my Wordpress.com content be portable?

https://move.wordpress.com/

You don't need to install JetPack. I don't like it and don't use it.

AbigayleRayPhotography

For what it's worth, I use Blogger for mine. It's simple enough to use, does exactly what is needed and no need for plug-ins and what not, and it is through Google and I have noticed that it shows up in search quickly. Just my .02¢

jimh

I thought wordpress.com was a combination of a cut-down version of Wordpress, plus hosting. If I create a blog there, can't I point a subdomain to it?
Self-hosting is going to be a big hassle and expense for possibly zero payoff.

AbigayleRayPhotography, I see your blog is in a subfolder rather than a subdomain. How did you do that? Is your domain here on SM?

Hikin' Mike

If you are using the '.com', you are limited for themes and probably plugins. No idea about re-directing, but I suppose you can contact them. If you are using a good host, then they probably have WordPress already set up. All you need to do is create a sub-domain and install WP. 5-minutes and you're done.

jimh

I already get my domain from GoDaddy and obviously they have cheap WordPress hosting and can give me the subdomain. So that's an option although it has pros and cons too.
Start Googling any of these options and you'll find reviews that are all over the map. GoDaddy's reputation has of course had its ups and downs for years.

Hikin' Mike

I don't use, nor will I recommend GoDaddy. I help a friend with his site (WordPress) and he uses GoDaddy. I hate it. They nickle and dime everything.

You shouldn't have to pay for hosting for WP. You bought your domain and you have it hosted. If they are trying to make you pay for WP hosting, you need to move to another host.

jimh

Godaddy doesn't host my domain, they just sold it to me through SM. AFAIK I'm not paying for hosting yet.

I don't like them either but I really don't want to start dealing with yet another company for hosting a WP blog.

There are just way too many options that are way too much work to compare. IF ONLY SM had blogs. But that's not happening.

Hikin' Mike

You ARE paying for hosting, someplace. It isn't SmugMug.

jimh

In the sense of 'hosting' the domain, DNS directing it to SM etc, yes. But I can't put a web site or blog there without paying more.

I don't like GoDaddy either. But the last time I did my own web sites, at LunarPages.com, it was a nightmare. Now I want simplicity. But I don't want to spend time on something that turns out to be a dead end. So of course I'm wary of GoDaddy.

AbigayleRayPhotography

jimh: My domain is here on Smugmug, my DNS is through Cloudflare (which I would highly recommend over many many others including GoDaddy which sorry to say, just flat out sucks!). As for the blog, I inserted a snippet of coding in the of the template I use on Blogspot (found at: https://thewayoftheweb.net/how-to-redirect-a-blogspot-blog-to-another-site/) The instructions on the link are way better than me trying to explain it as it has been a few years since I did this, but it works at least.

ETA: after some digging, I forgot (as I said, its been a while). Add a page, label it as "Blog", in page setup go to "social" -> "feed", in feed URL field put your Blogger (or wordpress or whatever) URL in (www.yourdomain.blogspot.com) and save, there you will have the redirect without what I listed above here.

leftquark

Hosting it on wordpress.com without a custom domain also has huge benefits for the SEO of your SmugMug site, if you're linking back to it. It uses the strong domain authority of WordPress.com to let Google/Bing know there's links back to your custom domain. This boosts the domain authority of your custom domain.

If you use a custom domain on your blog, then you have a domain with a low domain authority linking back to your SmugMug domain that has low domain authority. Instead it helps to post content on domains with high domain value.

AbigayleRayPhotography

jimh: I replied, went to edit and post was lost I guess (if there is a duplicate of this I'm sorry). Yes, my website is here on Smugmug and has been since 2011 (old timer here, lol)

Since the last post I figured it out without the work-around I had listed. As I had said, it has been a long time since I set this up. So basically you add a page, label it as "Blog" the in the setup of the page go to "Social" -> "Feed" in the URL field of the feed enter your blogger (wordpress, whatever you use) domain name (ex: yourdomain.blogspot.com) and save, you then should have the redirect setup as I have it now....easy lol

As for hosting....I use Cloudflare for my sites (Never ever use GoDaddy, they flat out suck both in cost and site speed performance!). Cloudflare has excellent speeds to help your site as well as great security settings. They offer a free version that is usually perfect for small businesses/websites, They also do domain registration now and only charge the the actual cost for renewal (my .com is $8.03 a year with them compared to nearly $18/year with GoDaddy and others), I can't recommend them enough!

Hikin' Mike

@leftquark said:
Hosting it on wordpress.com without a custom domain also has huge benefits for the SEO of your SmugMug site, if you're linking back to it. It uses the strong domain authority of WordPress.com to let Google/Bing know there's links back to your custom domain. This boosts the domain authority of your custom domain.

If you use a custom domain on your blog, then you have a domain with a low domain authority linking back to your SmugMug domain that has low domain authority. Instead it helps to post content on domains with high domain value.

I assume you are talking about Moz's Domain Authority (DA). That is not a Google thing and has no baring to ranking.

jimh

Thanks Abigayle. Sure wish we didn't have to understand so much detail about domains, DNS and hosting.
I am hearing you guys loud and clear about GoDaddy.

jimh

What leftquark said is exactly what I've been wondering.

You want your blog is to create backlinks to you portfolio site. And why would Google credit those backlinks, if they're from a subdomain, and are obviously just you linking to your own content? Wouldn't it be better to blog from a completely different domain, not obviously connected to your custom domain?

Hikin' Mike

@jimh said:
What leftquark said is exactly what I've been wondering.

You want your blog is to create backlinks to you portfolio site. And why would Google credit those backlinks, if they're from a subdomain, and are obviously just you linking to your own content? Wouldn't it be better to blog from a completely different domain, not obviously connected to your custom domain?

If you can create a backlink yourself. It's worthless.

jimh

So: if I blog from a subdomain, I might be adding quality content to my site, which is good. But any links I crreate have no value.

If I blog from another domain, my links MIGHT be seen as valid backlinks for search ranking. But the content doesn't count.

Hikin' Mike

Create great content that OTHER people will share/link to. That is how you get good backlinks.

jimh

Ok now this is getting interesting. I'm hearing 2 blogging strategies.

1. Have your blog on another domain not connected to your portfolio site, and link back to your photos - if the blog's domain has some authority, those links might boost your own domain and maybe get your photos indexed.

2. Have your blog on a subdomain of your own domain, and hope people link to it, because those links boost your domain (I think) even though they're to a subdomain.

Traffic to a blog on a subfolder deinitely boosts your domain authority and indexing. I find conflicting opinions about a subdomain.

And of course, since it's Google, everything could change next week :-)

leftquark

@jimh said:
And of course, since it's Google, everything could change next week :-)

Heheh, yep, Google is a big black box. Anyone (including myself) who claims to know anything about SEO is mostly just taking a stab in the dark -- we don't know what's inside Google's black box of an algorithm on how they rank things and what they choose to index. There's indications that there's some ranking on how much they trust a site that gives you that backlink, such that more trust-worthy sites carry more weight than a link on a less trust-worthy site. I've chosen to call that 'Domain Authority' and believe the concept to be sound and applicable to Google, regardless if another site or thing uses that term.

jimh

As I posted in another thread, I see a huge decline in the number of my photos indexed by Google. I have about 600, and Google Search Console recently showed me just 36 were indexed. The other 575 pages are "discovered, not currently indexed", meaning that Google basically said - no thanks.

So something has definitely changed; my guess is that Google now passes up 'gallery' pages in general.

I re-submitted my site to Search Console and requested indexing; after a few days I got an email about a "coverage issue": "Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt". I see I now have 38 pages indexed, up from 36. Woo hoo.

How could I turn this around? I already have descriptions and keywords. If my photo pages are no longer interesting to Google, I need to do something about the site in general. I think I'll start a blog, point my domain to it, and make my SM site a subdomain as Hikin Mike suggested. My dazzling wit and deep expertise will create content that Google will find irresistable. If that doesn't work then I guess it's hopeless.

jimh

I'm still climbing the learning curve but my understanding is that www.britishlandscapesphotography.co.uk/blog is a subfolder, not a subdomain.

rainforest1155

@britlandscapes said:
I am slightly confused with this point. I am almost three months in using SmugMug and have a link on my site to my Wordpress Blog which is hosted at Wordpress.com currently using the a free sub domain blog which was offered when I set up the blog. www.britishlandscapesphotography.photo.blog All the Blog content has been transferred from my old site host and still needs to be brought up to date but in due course I will be changing that sub domain to www.britishlandscapesphotography.co.uk/blog. Is what i am doing not the best way of linking to a Wordpress Blog ? And if not what should I be doing? I would of course ideally prefer a blog built into SmugMug which is what i had with my previous hosting. Many thanks

As Jim said, /blog is a subfolder and not something you can use for a custom domain set up to work with SmugMug. If you wanted to set up a subdomain, it would be:
blog.britishlandscapesphotography.co.uk
Just note that this wouldn't give you external links to your SmugMug site for content you feature.

If you wanted to get the domain authority boost that leftquark mentioned, normally you'd stick with a yourname.wordpress.com kind of address. I'm not familiar with the current photo.blog set up you have in place right now. If this was provided by wordpress.com, it might also provide some domain authority boost, but maybe not as much as a regular wordpress.com address as it seems to be a rather recent address addition for wordpress blogs.

leftquark

@britlandscapes said:

@leftquark said:
Hosting it on wordpress.com without a custom domain also has huge benefits for the SEO of your SmugMug site, if you're linking back to it. It uses the strong domain authority of WordPress.com to let Google/Bing know there's links back to your custom domain. This boosts the domain authority of your custom domain.

If you use a custom domain on your blog, then you have a domain with a low domain authority linking back to your SmugMug domain that has low domain authority. Instead it helps to post content on domains with high domain value.

I am slightly confused with this point. I am almost three months in using SmugMug and have a link on my site to my Wordpress Blog which is hosted at Wordpress.com currently using the a free sub domain blog which was offered when I set up the blog. www.britishlandscapesphotography.photo.blog All the Blog content has been transferred from my old site host and still needs to be brought up to date but in due course I will be changing that sub domain to www.britishlandscapesphotography.co.uk/blog. Is what i am doing not the best way of linking to a Wordpress Blog ? And if not what should I be doing? I would of course ideally prefer a blog built into SmugMug which is what i had with my previous hosting. Many thanks

Summarizing what @rainforest1155 said and consolidating: You're close. Instead of using britishlandscapephotography.photo.blog, it'd be best if you had it as britishlandscapephotography.wordpress.com.

Using the *.wordpress.com part of the URL gives your own domain a big boost when you link back to it. Search engines see "Oh look, WordPress.com, which we know is a great site, is linking to this other website. That other website must be important."

jimh

I get this, but I harbor doubts. If it were as easy as piggybacking the 'authority' of Wordpress.com, wouldn't thousands of photographers already be doing this... oh wait they are. But wouldn't that sort of dilute the 'authority'?

On the other hand if I create jimhphoto.blog aren't I possibly building my own domain authority over time? Or is that wishful thinking?

Hikin' Mike

@britlandscapes said:
Mainly things like headers, footers, fonts, colours etc This is beyond me at this stage and I have asked for help on this twice on the forums without any success - is there anyone you could recommend that could help me to achieve this.

If you need help with something specific, ask.

Hikin' Mike

@leftquark said:
Using the *.wordpress.com part of the URL gives your own domain a big boost when you link back to it. Search engines see "Oh look, WordPress.com, which we know is a great site, is linking to this other website. That other website must be important."

I disagree. I think having your own content ON YOUR OWN DOMAIN, not Blogger, WordPress etc, will see Google as important. I think Google may take light on those free sites. Just my opinion, nothing more.

Hikin' Mike

@britlandscapes said:
I thought that was what I had done and have also done on two previous occasions. That’s what I said in my comment

I don't remember what I did yesterday...lol!

Seriously, I don't remember seeing any questions about your site and/or your blog.

ziggy53

@Hikin' Mike said:

@britlandscapes said:
I thought that was what I had done and have also done on two previous occasions. That’s what I said in my comment

I don't remember what I did yesterday...lol!

Seriously, I don't remember seeing any questions about your site and/or your blog.

From back in August:
https://dgrin.com/discussion/265395/trying-to-match-my-wordpress-blog-to-my-smugmug-site#latest