Today I moved my blog to wordpress.com, so that it’s easier to update. With iWeb, you have to be on the computer where you created the site in order to update the blog. This isn’t exactly conducive to free flowing expression. So I’m using wordpress.com for the blog, and leaving the other pages on iWeb, with links between the two. With WordPress, I can even upload the blog from my iPhone, if the mood strikes.
Ideally, I would have used the downloadable software available on wordpress.org for the blog, but my site is hosted on MobileMe, which isn’t compatible with wordpress.org. So, for now I’ll use wordpress.com, and perhaps convert it later if a) Apple decides to cooperate or b) I get tired of the limitations and decide to switch to a more cooperative host.
What’s the difference between the .com and the .org, you ask? Well, the .com offers free hosting, and doesn’t require any understanding of how the web works in order to get up and running. In return for the free space and ease of use, WordPress will occasionally put ads on your page, and will not allow you to manipulate your page beyond it’s pre-set settings (that means you can’t change the CSS, or do much HTML), or put ads on your page that earn income for you.
The .org has software that you download, and install on your own hosting service. You can buy hosting for as little as $7 a month, but you need a host that allows for MySQL and PHP (if you don’t know what those are, you should probably stick with the .com version, for now). This is the problem with MobileMe is that it does not allow for these things.
I like Mobile Me. It provides an email address, 10 GB of storage that you can access anywhere (even on my phone!) and for iPhone users, provides that wonderful new feature called “Find My Phone” which will track your phone using the internal GPS so that you can locate it if it’s lost, and if it’s stolen, you can send a signal to the phone to erase all of your private data, so at least the thief can’t get into all of your accounts. If they would just allow for the MySQL and PHP support, it’d be perfect.