If you’re thinking of setting up a blog or a simple web site then WordPress is a great platform to build it on. It’s simple to use and easy to set up. But there are currently three different versions of WordPress available and one of the first technical question you’ll have to ask yourself is, “Which version of WordPress should I use?” In this article, we’ll help you figure out the differences between all three versions of WordPress  so that you can better understand which one is best suited to your requirements.

A Little Bit About WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular free blogging tools around. But it’s not just used by bloggers. Many companies and web designers use it as the basis of company web sites or incorporate it into an existing company web site to help their clients publish and manage news stories and articles.

Whether you’re setting up a personal blog, creating a new online magazine or building a web site using WordPress as a simple content management system, you’re first step in to the world of WordPress is to choose which version of WordPress you need. Although this is a technical question, as with all things technical, your decision should be lead by your business or project requirements.

As you read through this article, bear in mind the following three questions as these are the deal breakers:

1. Do you need to place advertising on your WordPress site?
2. Do you need to use your own design or a specific WordPress theme?
3. Do you need to incorporate specific WordPress widgets or include your own JavaScript on pages?

If you answered an emphatic YES to any of these questions then you’ll probably have to download the WordPress.org version, but read on and I’ll explain why.

WordPress Versions

So, WordPress comes in three different versions, all of which are free to use and adapt to suit your own needs. These are:

1. WordPress.com
2. WordPress.org
3. WordPress μ (the μ symbol is the Greek letter “mu” pronounced “myoo”.
   mu = multi user)

We’ll look primarily at the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org as WordPress μ is only a special adaptation of WordPress.org that is used to manage multiple blogs from one central point and is not relevant to most individuals. WordPress μ is used by leading online newspapers such as Le Monde , CNN and the New York Times. So you’re in good company, but their needs probably go beyond yours so let’s put WordPress μ to one side for the moment.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is the hosted version of the blogging software. All of the files are hosted free of charge by Automattic, the company that created WordPress. You simply create an account and start writing your articles. This is definitely the easiest way to get started and it has a number of limitations and a number of benefits.

Benefits

• very low barrier to entry. No hosting accounts to set up or files to install. Just sign up and start writing.
• very robust hosting which is useful if your web site becomes an overnight success and demand is very high.
• all of the latest upgrades are applied for you by the WordPress team

Limitations

• you cannot use advertising schemes such as Google AdSense on your site
• you are limited in how much you can change the design of the site
• you only receive basic analytics information

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is the version that you download and install on a hosting account that you or your web designer has set up for you. There are no restrictions on what you can do with the software and how you can change the design.

However, you do have to apply all updates your self and make sure you have back ups of all your data.

Some web hosting companies provide very easy installation procedures that automate most of the work and in that case you don’t have to upload any files to your hosting account unless you want to change the design of the site from one of the standard templates available.

Using Your Own Domain Name With WordPress

If you’re building a company web site or a site for an organisation then you’ll most likely want to use your own domain name.

You can use your own domain name for your WordPress blog irrespective of which version you use.

By default all WordPress.com blogs have the address [YOUR BLOG NAME].wordpress.com (e.g. blueclock.wordpress.com)

If you opt to go down the WordPress.com route, you have to pay an annual fee of around $15 to use your own domain name. This does not include the cost of the domain name itself.

Can I Use My Own Design On WordPress?

Yes and No!

As we’ve already seen, you can change any files you like with the WordPress.org version so using a bespoke design or a third party theme isn’t a problem.

If you’re hosted on WordPress.com you design options are limited to the pre-installed themes with the option to change the header image or for an option $15 per year you can also have access to the CSS (but not the actual PHP files). These two options can get you a long way if you are a bit creative and have good CSS skills, but if you really must have complete control over your design, you’re going to have to choose WordPress.org.

WordPress Templates and Themes

WordPress uses a system of templates and themes to change the layout and appearance of the web site. These are very easy to use and provide great flexibility. There are a vast number of WordPress templates available on the web. Some web sites provide free WordPress templates, others charge for premiums templates which are only sold to a limited number of people. Some web designers specialise in customising WordPress to your exact specification or creating bespoke themes and plug-ins.

WordPress.com comes with a number of free themes and you can change your current theme at the click of a button, but you cannot use your own themes on WordPress.com.

In a WordPress.org based site you can import any number of themes that you have downloaded from the web.

If you want to use your own template or a template that you have bought, you will need to use the WordPress.org installation.

WordPress Hosting Requirements

If you opt to use the WordPress.org or MU versions you’ll have to find a place to host your web site.

WordPress is built on PHP and MySQL.

The present minimum configuration requirements are:

• PHP 4.3 or greater
• MySQL 4.0 or greater
• The mod_rewrite Apache module

but always check WordPress.org/about/requirements and read the documentation before choosing your web hosting company.

WordPress.com Terms of Service

Another factor which will determine your choice of WordPress version are the Terms of Service. The WordPress Terms of Service apply to blogs hosted by WordPress.com and prevent you from some fairly fundamental things which may be the reason you are setting up a blog in the first place.

1. You cannot place paid advertising on your blog

Not only is this part of the terms of service, most popular advertising schemes used by small web site owners such as Google AdSense require the use of JavaScript. Any JavaScript that you try to post to a page will be stripped out and render the advertising useless.

2. You cannot use the blog for search engine optimisation i.e. to boost the rank of another web site

If your sole intention for setting up the blog is to improve the search engine ranking another web site then you risk having your account closed.

WordPress Licensing

WordPress.org is package that you either download and install on your hosting account or will be provided pre-installed by your hosting company. Either way, you’ll have access to all of the files that make up the WordPress blogging software. WordPress.org is Open Source and released under the GPL, which means that you can access the code and make any changes that you want. So you can use the code to create something completely different if you like. And yes, it’s still free of charge.

Access To Analytics

WordPress.com uses Google Analytics to provide you with free stats about how many time your blog posts are viewed, which sites are linking to you and what words people searched on to find your articles.

If you require access to the full statistics provided by a package like Google Analytics or if you want to use another package then you will have to go down the WordPress.org route.

What If I Change My Mind?

Web sites grow and requirements change over time. If you find that you need some of the capabilities that WordPress.com does not offer, don’t worry, you’re not locked into using that system and you’ve not lost all your hard work.

All of your pages, blog posts and comments can be exported from any of the WordPress versions and imported into another version. This means that not only can you upgrade from .com to your own version of .org, you can also change hosts relatively easily as well.

Feature Comparison Table

Hopefully, this article has addressed the main questions that you had about WordPress and your now in an informed position to set up your blog.

The table below is a quick overview of the main features as they apply to each WordPress version.

Requirement	WP.com	WP.org	WP μ
I want to have advertising on the site	No	Yes	Yes
I want to use my own design	Partial	Yes	Yes
I want to use a third party template or theme	No	Yes	Yes
I want to edit the CSS	Paid Upgrade	Yes	Yes
I want to use plug-ins and widgets	Only those provided	Yes, any	Yes, any
I want to use my own domain	Paid Upgrade	Yes	Yes
I want to include my own or third party JavaScript	No	Yes	Yes
Standard Storage	3Gb	Dependent on your host	Dependent on your host
I want a site that requires no knowledge to set up	Yes	No	No
I want free hosting	Yes	Possible	Possible

A blog is a type of web site that is used primarily to publish articles and updates in a diary like fashion. Blogs differ from a regular corporate web site in this key respect. In a corporate web site or an e-commerce site, the focus is often on information that does not change very often.

Regular web sites should aim to make the most important information the most easily accessible. Blogs work on the basis of a regularly changing timeline and are read differently to a regular web site. So for example if you need a plumber and use the web to search for a local plumber you will probably check the contact details page and any examples of previous work. However with a blog, you are more likely to subscribe to the blog as you would with a magazine and read the blog articles because the subject of the blog appeals to you.

In general, blogs are easy to set up and can be free of charge if you use a hosted service such as WordPress.com, Blogger.com or TypePad.com. However, you may wish to have a large degree of control over the customisation
and design of your blog and to integrate it closely with your organisation’s existing web site. In this case you will can still use freely available blogging software such as WordPress, but will probably have to pay a professional to do the design and integration. Even if you opt for a paid solution, you will still have the ease of use associated with free, hosted services.

Because of the low barrier to entry in setting up a blog, many different types of blogs have emerged and they are written by a huge variety of people and organisations. Some people use blogs as a way to keep their families up to date with the events of their lives, others use it to experiment with writing, while others write about hobbies and niche interests which can find a large readership on the internet. Organisation can use blogs to issue campaign updates or present a less formal aspect of their corporation.

Some blogs are direct equivelants of traditional newspaper columns and some blogs are seasonal covering a voyage or a major sporting league. Some blogs do no even have any written content but comprise exclusively of photographs
or video updates.

What all blogs have in common is the ability to grow a readership and for those readers to contribute to the blog in the form of comments. Some popular authors can write articles on blogs that regularly receive hundreds of comments. This open, conversational format usually with a single author is perhaps the key defining factor of a blog.

If you or your organisation are starting to think about blogging here’s a quick whistle stop tour of blogging that will help you hit the ground running. As with any technology there are a few terms that are banded around as commonplace that you might not be familiar with but which can be useful when starting to blog.

Blog

The word blog is used to mean the actual site where you will publish your articles and news. It can also be used as a verb, e.g. “Are you going to blog that?”, meaning, are you going to put that on the blog.

Post

In the world of blogs, post is the word used to mean individual pieces of writing e.g. an article, news update or tutorial etc. You can “post” a piece of news or link to a particular post.

Commments

By default, all blogging software will enable your readers to add comments at the end if any articles you have written. Depending on the software that you are using to write your blog, you will have options to manage how people can comment. You can require people to register or provide an email address before being allowed to comment. You can also  set options so that you can check what people have said in their comments before they appear to the public. You will also be able to treat certain people as “trusted” once they have already posted comments Whatever you choose to do, don’t forget, it’s your blog and you can allow or deny whatever comments you want.

Comment Spam

Once your blog has been running for a few weeks you’ll probably encounter the scourge of comment spam. This can take a couple of forms. The most common form is automatically generated by computers adding comments to thousands of blogs in the hope that some will be approved. This type of spam usually has a link in it to another website that the spammer wants your readers to visit. Most blogging systems have a spam filter built in and will catch the bulk of this type of spam automatically. The second type of comment spam is often created manually by someone visiting your site and can be quite subtle. The person may compliment your site and then suggest that others visit their site. They may promote a competing product or organisation. Once again, remember, it’s your blog and you can allow or disallow whatever content you want.

Permalinks

A permalink is just a link to a specific post on a blog. They are given a special name because by their very nature posts can appear in many different places in a blog and so it can be useful to have one unique link to give to a person if they want to visit a particular article. For example when a post is first written, it may appear on the home page of the blog, but then over time, drop off the home page as other articles are written. It may also appear in a list of posts of a particular category. But when telling people about your post, it’s best to send them the permalink as this is the most reliable place to find the post.

Blogosphere

The blogosphere is the community of all the blogs on the web. When you create a blog, it joins the blogosphere. Although this is just a notional term, it does have some importance, as search engines do tend to index frequently updated blogs more often than what they regard as more traditional web sites.

Blogroll

The is a common section in a blog where bloggers link to other blogs that they like. It is not compulsory to have a blog roll.

Draft

Blogging systems such as WordPress enable you to write your posts online and save them without publishing them. Therefore you can use your blog as a kind of scratchpad where you start creating an article and come back to it later to enhance it before completing it and publishing it.

Scheduled Posts

Even when you have completed a post, you may not want it to appear on your blog until a specific time and date. This is called a scheduled post. Some bloggers write several posts in one sitting and schedule them for publication at a later date. This can help reduce your work load and ensure that their is a regular and predictable flow of information from your blog.

Post Frequency

This relates to how often you post articles. There are different schools of thought on this and it really depends on what type of blog you run, but it is generally believed that to help build reader loyalty, it it best to have a rythmn to your blogging, be that every day, once a week or once a month.

Trackback

You can set the comments section of your blog to show which other blogs are linking to that particular post.

Whenever anyone links to one of your posts, that link appears as a comment on that post.

Moderation

The process of holding a comment for review by someone responsible for the blog. This enables you to catch spam, or libelous and damaging comments.

Post Categories

Because blogs are generally published in reverse chronological order, like a diary, one entry after another, bloggers usually assign categories to their posts to help organise and collate them.

A post can have more than one category. The full list of categories is usually shown on a blog page, a bit like an index, so that readers can easily access other posts that may be of interest to them. The categories for a particular post are usually also shown either at the top or the end of the post.

Pages v Posts

When you publish a post on your blog, it usually appears on the home page of the blog. If you add another post, the previous post may then be shunted down the home page or be removed from the home page altogether. So posts move their position over time.

By contrast, a page on a blog always remains in the same place in the blog. Pages (or static pages) are usually used to convey general information such as an overview of the blog or project, details of the author or a contact form.

Posts are affected by time, pages are the structural elements of a blog. Many blogs have no static pages at all.

RSS Feed

If you have a feed on your blog (most do), all of the posts that you create are added to a single file called an RSS feed. Visitors can subscribe to that feed using an RSS reader, a web browser or their email package. When ever the file is updated (i.e. when a new post is published) they will see that there is something new on the blog without even having to visit it.

Widgets

Most blogging systems have some kind of plug-ins or widgets that you can add to your blog design. These can be small snippets of code that, for example, enable you to show a gallery of photos, the top 5 most read posts, or that display the 5 latest comments.

So, if you’re new to blogging I hoe this help you get to grips with some of the terms. But don’t forget, it’s not the jargon that counts, but what you write. Good luck and happy blogging.

Adobe launched their latest technology called Adobe AIR at the beginning of 2008. It’s an exciting technology that lets web developers to use their skills to build applications for virtually any desktop environment.

What Exactly Is Adobe Air?

AIR stands for, the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and is one of the latest interesting development from Adobe.

AIR runs on Windows, Mac OS X and a very usable Beta version for Linux. A version for mobile devices is on the roadmap and should be announced in the second half of 2008. It installs the first time you download and run an AIR application, much in the same way that Flash is installed on a computer if the user visits a web site using Flash and they don’t already have it installed.

Air applications run on the desktop and are half way between web based applications (which run in a browser) and full blown desktop applications such as Word or Photoshop.

Developers can create AIR applications using the HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, Flex (A flash framework) and PDF knowledge they already have and AIR acts as a wrapper that allows them to run on the desktop and go beyond the limitations they would normally have if they were running in a web browser.

Is It A Web or a Desktop Application?

Neither, it’s a kind of hybrid.

AIR applications differ from current web applications because AIR applications do not run in your web browser and therefore are able to use desktop features such as full drag and drop between applications, save files to the local hard drive or network and store data locally in a database.

When compared to traditional desktop applications, AIR applications are simple to deploy, easy and cost-effective to build, have better web integration and will run on all three of the major operating systems.

AIR finds the best of both worlds. It can interact with online resources if connected or use local storage (via the included SQLite database) and synchronise data when an online source when next connected.

AIR is also smart enought to know when it is and isn’t connected so you can create programmes that work with online data and use the local database as a fallback if the connection to the internet is dropped.

So Is AIR a Web Browser?

No. AIR uses HTML and Flash it needs browser technology to work. AIR uses the WebKit rendering engine (used in Safari) to display the HTML and/or Flash and process the JavaScript.

So your appplication will render predictably using the most advanced rendering engine available at the moment, but look like a traditional desktop programme. If you open an AIR application, you’ll be able to work with that application, but you won’t be able to then use the application as a regular browser to visit other web sites.

Why Does Adobe Air Matter?

The reason that AIR is significant is not so much for what can be created, but for how those applications are created and who can create them.

There’s not really that much new in AIR from a technology perspective. Its strength is that web developers can use existing web technologies, (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash and PDF to create applications that run on the desktop. AIR can work in tandem with your existing web sites and web applications and can be built by web developers using the skills they already have. In the cases where AIR will be working in tandem with an existing web site you have much of the code that you need developed already.

AIR also matters because it gives companies that only have a web presence the ability to have a presence on the user desktop as well. AIR interrupts the process of opening a browser and searching for a service. Companies that provide successful AIR applications stand to benefit from higher customer retention.

Who Is Using Air?

AIR acceptance has been rapid and already, some high profile companies such as eBay and PayPal are developing AIR applications and whole range of smaller companies are investing resources in AIR applications.