I came away from the course full of enthusiasm and confident that I could do lots with my current blog to improve its format and presence, however as I worked through a number of the things I had noted down, it soon became obvious that a lot of the functionality highlighted on the course was not available to me on the .com version. For example, downloading a number of recommended plugins (including monetisation, gallery functionality and Google Analytics) is not possible and more importantly being able to change my “ugly” permalinks to more meaningful ones, which is important for Google searches, appears not to be possible. The range of themes available is also vastly increased by moving to WordPress.org.
I understand that I can import my WordPress.com content onto a WordPress.org version which is important in maintaining a complete version of my course blog in one place.
I am hoping that I can use the time until the next module starts to consider this change further and find out more clearly what the pros and cons are in sticking with my current arrangement of a simple blog and separate Clikpic website or moving to a combined WordPress.org website. Any comments on this will be gratefully received!
References
Sabin-Wilson, L (2017) WordPress for Dummies, John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey
If you are going to switch, which makes a lot of sense, then there is a new WordPress editor in testing at the moment, called Gutenberg, and you will be offered the opportunity to use it or to stick to the fully-tested original. Gutenberg is the WordPress response to the enormous popularity of the third party Divi theme, which provided much more user-friendly editing tools. If you stick to the standard editor then you will almost certainly want to use Divi. I don’t know what the anticipated release date is, but personally I’d just dive in and start with Gutenberg. What either route will mean, I’m afraid, is that books like WordPress for Dummies will be redundant very soon – so don’t allow yourself to get too confused if you try to find something in there and it doesn’t match the world in front of you. Good luck.
Very helpful advice Graham. Thank you.