Holy cow I will tell you about my exciting adventure and why I think the answer should be yes if you are just starting off.
When I started blogging in 2005 I first did a personal blog and it was paid for at typepad. I ended up changing to a free wordpress site about 2007. For some reason I decided to start a birth blog in October of 2007 and liked wordpress so stuck with that. I don’t even think I knew about a self-hosting option. I already had a website I was paying for so it wouldn’t have even cost me any more money.
In 2009 I first toyed with the idea of changing to self-hosted. There were somethings I wanted to do that I couldn’t’ on the .com But it was so overwhelming thinking about changing that I couldn’t quite go there. I knew it would take a lot of work.
I started doing the 31 days to a better blog challenge in July and realized if I wanted to add some cool things to my blog I needed to change over. So, I bit the bullet and it bit back. It was supposed to be easy and I will spare you the details, but it wasn’t.
I ended up hiring a fellow blogger to help me with the move and design and I am glad I did. I just wish I had hired her about 7 hours of work earlier.
I don’t know if it was worth it yet or not. I will follow up in September after a month of using self-hosted wordpress.
So right now I would say if you are starting off, go ahead and start self-hosted. If you are .com right now, give me a month to tell you what I think.
Edited to add, I just started playing with plugins. I found some great ones to start with at Digital Woe and I think now it may indeed be worth it! 🙂
