Is WordPress.org still the GOAT?

[brandonsnode]

Hey everyone, I'm fairly new to this world so apologies if these are silly questions.

I am reading through the Crash Course and noticed that on Day 4, the recommendation by @Ryuzaki is to use Wordpress.org, citing that Wordpress.com is a web 2.0 solution. A few questions on this:

- What are the advantages of using a self-hosted solution (wordpress.org) vs a web 2.0 solution (wordpress.com)? The post mentions "no limitations" but curious what this means in practice when building the website in the future and what hurdles .com could present
- In 2022 does this still remain the preferred solution by builders?

For context, I work in SaaS world so I am familiar with Wordpress.com vaguely, but not so familiar with Wordpress.org. I have also heard of newer web2 solutions like Webflow, Carrd, Wix, etc. I imagine these all have the same disadvantages as Wordpress.com but curious if someone could expand on why exactly these web2 solutions aren't recommended.

Thanks!

 

[voLdie]

wordpress.com = renting an overpriced shitty apartment where you could be evicted for any reason

wordpress.org = building a home on pristine land you own 100% of the rights to

You can never sell a web 2.0. You're building nothing.

Using self-hosted WP, you're building an asset you own. Absolute.

If you work in Saas, I assume you should understand what open source is.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@brandonsnode, This is a good question. I think it really depends on what your goals are and what the "web 2.0" service is offering you.

Take Shopify for example. If you want to run a small eCommerce store and not worry about payment processing and all that, then Shopify makes a lot of sense. I'd use it. You'll own your domain at least and can recreate the URLs elsewhere if for some reason you feel the need to bail on Shopify.

And that describes the danger of all these WYSIWYG Done-For-You No-Code blah blah web 2.0 services. You're giving up a lot of things to not have to worry about some technical details. You could look at it as managed hosting with a built-in display ad network and optimized servers for Wordpress or whatever else you want to tag on. That might be great for someone who's actually a blogger who's doing it for fun only and not profit.

But many of us look at it from the other direction and see the trade off for these "benefits" (which can be had elsewhere). We see the negatives. We can't tune our own servers. We can't dig into PHPMyAdmin and through the database. We want different options for monetization. We want to be able to move our sites to different servers, hire people to dig into them and optimize anything and everything. We want to design our own themes from the ground up. We don't want to inadvertently type the wrong word and get banned. And most importantly, we want to be able to hand this asset off to others like us (who won't want a web 2.0 site) when we sell the thing for big bucks.

Most server companies offer Softaculous's One-Click Installs of Wordpress.org anyways. But at a bare minimum if you want to have success online you need to be willing to learn the basics of renting a server, logging in manually and with SFTP, exporting and importing the database and backing up files, HTML, CSS, some basic PHP and JS, so on and so forth. Like the very basics. Trying to avoid any of that (and I'm not saying you in particular, but just the general newbie reader) is setting yourself up for annoyances, spending a lot of money and time hiring people for 3 minute basic tasks, and likely failure since this level of laziness and un-enthusiasm will effect other areas of your work too.

 

[CCarter]

Shopify

I was going to jump in also with Shopify, their Shop Pay allows users to sign up and not need to enter their credit card information if they previously shopped at another Shopify store.

So there is a MAJOR barrier to checkout taken out from this. That alone is why I only recommend Shopify for eCommerce setups now.

Most major brands are using Shopify and therefore the likelihood their CC information is already within the Shopify network takes so much headache away that it's become the defacto king of eCommerce solutions.

 

[brandonsnode]

Using self-hosted WP, you're building an asset you own. Absolute.

You're giving up a lot of things to not have to worry about some technical details.

Thanks everyone, this is super insightful and these two points really drive the point home for me. Also love the analogy @voLdie lol

I was going to jump in also with Shopify, their Shop Pay allows users to sign up and not need to enter their credit card information if they previously shopped at another Shopify store.

This is fascinating, and I see the draw of this @CCarter . And a good example of why I asked this question i.e. has web2 evolved in some ways that provides a better tradeoff to, say, Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org.

But at a bare minimum if you want to have success online you need to be willing to learn the basics of renting a server, logging in manually and with SFTP, exporting and importing the database and backing up files, HTML, CSS, some basic PHP and JS, so on and so forth. Like the very basics.

Considering only about a half of these make sense to me, it sounds like this is where I need to start regardless of what path I take @Ryuzaki . And this is probably reason enough alone to go the Wordpress.org route so that I learn the ropes and can better understand the ins and outs of website building and management.

Again, possibly a naive question -- is the goal always to sell? Is it wishful thinking to believe that writing on a niche / sub-topic that I'm passionate about will also be a profitable one? Not that this should be an excuse to not build a foundation in such a way that could be sold in the future, but just curious around the notion of "building to sell" in general. Also apologies if this is covered in the Crash Course... I'm reading through slowly and surely and am on Day 5

Really appreciate the community y'all have built here.

 

[voLdie]

Agree with @Ryuzaki and @CCarter.

I feel like ecom is a bit different where the physical item is the product.

I think owning the infrastructure is important when your content is the product.

 

[Ryuzaki]

is the goal always to sell?

I feel like everyone has this thought at some point, especially the early stages of their careers. And I think the true reason for the thoughts are that liquidating an entire business for huge chunks of money is scary. If the person is just in "start up" mode, they can't even imagine making big revenues let alone big revenues times a multiple of 36x or whatever. It's simply outside the realm of possibility in their mind. And the responsibility, stress, and the general "what it all means" is scary, too.

So people come up with reasons like "I'll just hold it forever and keep the passive income because I'll make more that way anyways and I want the cash flow." And "This is my precious little baby that I built with my own hands and I'm so emotionally attached to it I'll never let it go." These are never the true reasons, in my opinion. This is just how our brains lie to us and keep us safe from confronting the fear.

People can say what they want (and it'll probably be one of the reasons above), and I admit even to this day I have reasons I don't want to sell. My most recent one was "It's totally messed up that I'll build a site and front all the time and money and carry all the risk, then a buyer comes along and expects to have a structure payout schedule so that I have to carry all the risk even during liquidation. They could screw it up during the transition period and cost both of us a ton of money." That's absolutely true but not a good enough reason to cash out.

At the end of the proverbial day, you have 4 outcomes and they all lead back to the #1 outcome:

1. You sell the business at some point near the peak (unless you go the path of #3) and ride off into the sunset.
2. You hold as long as you can to extract more cash, and then get more nervous about it doing less well and then you see #1.
3. You hold as long as you can and the earnings start to decay, and you try to remind yourself that this was the plan but when reality strikes you realize it was stupid and you see #1.
4. You've created a true business with employees and managers and you only act as owner collecting a paycheck. You're free as a bird except the phone calls and meetings and some quality assurance checks to make sure you're not being cheated. Eventually you tire of that and get excited about something else and want the time and cash to pursue it so you see #1.

The goal isn't always to sell because people are romantic and lie to themselves. The outcome is usually to sell it unless they're dense enough to ride it all the way into the dirt once it starts decaying from lack of effort and input.

Then again, there's the quote that "rich people sell, wealthy people hold". But there's limited time on this planet. Selling is how you fast forward yourself through time to essentially buy more time. Let's say you sell for 3 years of profit and you no longer have work to do. Now you're starting your next venture 3 years earlier (or 6 years or more) than you would have otherwise. Now you have a years-long head start towards the next liquidation / fast-forward event and the cash to buy other people's time for the next project and fast-forward even more.

Is it wishful thinking to believe that writing on a niche / sub-topic that I'm passionate about will also be a profitable one?

Maybe. You have to do the market research and make sure the spend is there. There has to be enough money being spent by enough interested people for high enough margins that you can make a lot of money. Otherwise you're wasting your time. Nothing is more important than market research and some sort of validation to make sure what you're about to do is viable. Otherwise you're going to lose time and money. Money isn't a big deal. Time, you can't get back (except with the methods mentioned above).

The reason for that is the difficulty, time, energy, and money to build a stupid business is equal to that needed to build a smart business. The difference is one might end up making you $10k a month at the peak and the other might make you $300k a month at the peak, or god forbid a few million even (per month)... for the same masterful effort.

 

[milkandhoney]

What are the advantages of using a self-hosted solution (wordpress.org) vs a web 2.0 solution (wordpress.com)

The biggest advantage is cost.

Especially at the start, depending on what your goals are, if you want to make a content site and rank in google, it'll take time and cloud hosting definitely stacks up and could well be something that turns you off website building when you haven't made a dime in 1 year but have racked up a $300

Anyway, my two cents is get stuck into wordpress.org (low hosting fees) or dive into static site building (even lower fees) but wordpress.org will be quicker to learn and get started.

 

[brandonsnode]

Thanks everyone. My progress is slow, but it is steady. I've been travelling for work and have hunkered down to dive into the depths. As @Ryuzaki recommended, I am purposefully avoiding shortcuts like EasyWP and Softaculous so that I can learn the basics. What I've done so far:

- Purchased a domain
- Purchased and set up shared server hosting
- Set up cPanel, changed my username and password
- Confirmed PHP, mySQL and MariaDB versions are up-to-date
- Learned about FTP and Filezilla, but as Day 4 recommends, opted to repackage the Wordpress.org zip file manually, and then upload and extract to root via File Manager in cPanel
- Deleted the .zip file to keep my website clean
- Created the mySQL database and user, and assigned them with all permissions
- Completed Wordpress installation
- Saved important information to my Master File

While this might seem like nothing to a lot of you more experienced folks, as someone that is not very technical (despite working in tech, I am on the "business" side) this was a really eye-opening experience.

Reading Day 4 in the Crash Course for the first time back in July... it was like reading an alien language. Then, once I read and read and read about PHP, mySQL, cPanel, FTP, SSH, Wordpress, how websites work, and so on... going back and reading Day 4 again was night-and-day.

If anyone else is like and is feeling discouraged about getting started, my advice is simple: READ.

 

[Zoro]

Thanks everyone. My progress is slow, but it is steady. I've been travelling for work and have hunkered down to dive into the depths. As @Ryuzaki recommended, I am purposefully avoiding shortcuts like EasyWP and Softaculous so that I can learn the basics. What I've done so far:

- Purchased a domain
- Purchased and set up shared server hosting
- Set up cPanel, changed my username and password
- Confirmed PHP, mySQL and MariaDB versions are up-to-date
- Learned about FTP and Filezilla, but as Day 4 recommends, opted to repackage the Wordpress.org zip file manually, and then upload and extract to root via File Manager in cPanel
- Deleted the .zip file to keep my website clean
- Created the mySQL database and user, and assigned them with all permissions
- Completed Wordpress installation
- Saved important information to my Master File

While this might seem like nothing to a lot of you more experienced folks, as someone that is not very technical (despite working in tech, I am on the "business" side) this was a really eye-opening experience.

Reading Day 4 in the Crash Course for the first time back in July... it was like reading an alien language. Then, once I read and read and read about PHP, mySQL, cPanel, FTP, SSH, Wordpress, how websites work, and so on... going back and reading Day 4 again was night-and-day.

If anyone else is like and is feeling discouraged about getting started, my advice is simple: READ.

I have read all this in the crash course but what I do not understand is why people dont go with a host like GoDaddy or Wix? I know the companies might not be the best but if you find a good host provider why go through the hassle of setting it all up yourself?

 

[Jesse]

I have read all this in the crash course but what I do not understand is why people dont go with a host like GoDaddy or Wix? I know the companies might not be the best but if you find a good host provider why go through the hassle of setting it all up yourself?

I can't answer for anyone else, but I'll offer this:

Once you know how it all works, which isn't as complicated as it seems, you can do everything he listed in 15-20 minutes or so with a very minimal amount of hassle, including download/upload times for the WordPress package (can vary on Internet speeds).

 

[cheese]

Plus, the major hosts all offer one-click installers for Wordpress. Some are even easier than signing up for Wordpress.com/WIX.

Also, WIX/Squarespace is hot garbage and no one should ever use them.

 

[brandonsnode]

Plus, the major hosts all offer one-click installers for Wordpress. Some are even easier than signing up for Wordpress.com/WIX.

Also, WIX/Squarespace is hot garbage and no one should ever use them.

I opted to avoid the one-click installers. Namecheap for example does not provide access to cPanel with their one-click install.

 

[cheese]

I opted to avoid the one-click installers. Namecheap for example does not provide access to cPanel with their one-click install.

If you need access to cPanel, you're hardly the target audience for WIX or Squarespace.

 

[Wiki_Editor]

wordpress.com = renting an overpriced shitty apartment where you could be evicted for any reason

wordpress.org = building a home on pristine land you own 100% of the rights to

You can never sell a web 2.0. You're building nothing.

Using self-hosted WP, you're building an asset you own. Absolute.

If you work in Saas, I assume you should understand what open source is.

I was confused by this at first too, but yeah, ultimately you don't own the site on WP.com, but own it and have full ability to monetize it how you want on WP.org, and eventually sell it if you wanted.

 

[Roy Cohen]

For newbies, yes. I wouldn't consider doing anything else for the time being unless you need to build out a huge site, which then you're going to want to rely on building the site yourself.