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reddit.com › r/blogging › confused about bluehost and wordpress function.

r/Blogging on Reddit: Confused about Bluehost and WordPress function.

November 11, 2022 -

I've blogged in the past and will be starting a new blog in the next few months. It's been quite a while ago so don't remember everything and am reading quite a bit of info.

I am confused about the difference (?) between what Bluehost does and what WordPress does. I plan to have Bluehost, and it talks about installing WordPress, which I plan to do. But I'm hung up on understanding the difference between their functions.

Also, I've read you can monetize with WordPress.com, but the WordPress installed on Bluehost is WordPress.org.

I promise I'm not a complete imbecile, but I do want to understand this and make the right decision for monetizing when I get my blog up and running.

Thank you!

Top answer

1 of 4

Wordpress.com is a community of blogs being hosted on WordPress.com. They use WordPress the CMS (Content Management System) to do so. It's free to create an account and create a site as a subdomain of wordpress.com. Bluehost is a hosting company. They offer to host your WordPress site. They can also give you a fresh install. Again they use the WordPress CMS. WordPress.org is the official website for the WordPress CMS. You can also download it there, check on the latest updates and so on. TLDR I know it is a little confusing. WordPress is software. WordPress.com is a blogging site.

2 of 4

Web developer here. Think of bluehost as diesel, and wordpress as a Toyota sedan. You are a writer, and between your writing and your audience, you need some medium of distribution where you can transport your words to your readers. You could distribute via train ( Medium.com ) via helicopter ( Twitter.com ) via jet (joomla) or via a Toyota sedan ( wordpress.org ). All these vehicles transport people (all these websites just send text to readers by authors/influencers). They differ in the manner of their transport. All forms of transport require fuel, but not necessarily the same fuel. twitter.com and medium.com both run their servers on AWS cloud computing (a boeing and an airbus use the same jetfuel for example). Joomla is a software you install by yourself (like a DIY scooter) on a server (just fancy term for "computer that works all the time to operate a website"). Wordpress is a software like Joomla - instead of coding the blog by yourself from scratch, it's a prepared all-you-need blogging platform. Think of the difference between building a Tesla by yourself, and just ordering one from the internet. Wordpress is a tool. Like a Toyota sedan is a car. Everyone technically can assemble motors and wheels into a car. But Toyota assembled a combination of wheels, motors and sensors they believe satisfy a need for a large portion of the population. That is wordpress.com . See, not everyone knows how to build a car (or install wordpress on a linux server). So a specific company such as wordpress.com took it upon themselves to take out 95% of the complexity out of your hands in gettting a website up and running for a small cost (Toyota). You CAN build your own car. Or even buy a sedan from a company that is NOT Toyota. Wordpress, at first, is a piece of open source software that no one really owns. wordpress.com is to Wordpress the software what a sedan is to a Toyota sedan. Now to bluehost. Bluehost is fuel. wordpress.com uses a transport medium, but it requires fuel. In tech, computing power is the fuel, mostly done by servers (i.e. someone else's PC, but without a monitor, mouse, or GPU. Just storage and processing). Whether if you use wordpress.com , install Wordpress yourself, or write on Medium, your writing will be stored somewhere. That somewhere costs fuel (i.e. server costs). And like in real world transportation - it costs less money to buy gas by yourself from a gas station, pump it to your car, and drive to where you need, than to call an Uber. However, calling an Uber is faster and easier. The more you pay, the less you are bothered. What's the right choice? Depends. I'm a techincal guy, so I will always install wordpress by myself and purchase my own computing. I can even spin a linux machine on AWS and pay a fraction of what bluehost will charge. But then again, it's cause I am a programmer. Decide where you fall on the technical skills/time/money spectrum, and proceed accordingly.

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