Website creation Archives

What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

When you want to get into blogging you will automatically stumble over WordPress. It is a free software product that quickly became the most popular blogging tool on the Internet. So far so good, but there is one point of confusion, because you can find two versions .com and .org and you may wonder what is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

WordPress is an Open Source software meaning it’s free for anyone to use and modify to meet their personal needs (in this case, to create blogs). But there are two versions of Wordpress. WordPress.com used this core software but provides the hosting for you, for example like Blogger. However since they do the hosting for you for free , it does have limitations.

Alternatively, WordPress.org provides the software to create your blog, but does not host your blog on the Internet for you. You need to find and pay a separate hosting provider to obtain a domain name and host your blog online. By using WordPress.org with a paid hosting service you have the most freedom of what you can do with it.

Here are in all briefness the pros and cons for both (more…)

May 7th, 2013|Tags: Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org|

More than 50! – Extensive List of Web Hosting Sites

Are you looking for web hosting sites that are able to match your needs? When I was looking for a site to host DarnOffice I searched for “web hosting sites” and noticed that most of the listings or reviews that came up mostly only listed the same ten sites. These ten may be the best web hosts on the internet, but how do I know that all these listings and reviews are independent and unbiased?

The internet is so huge and I like to consider all my options. This is why I went far beyond the first ten Google pages to find my hosting provider. As a result, I present you this list of more than 50 possible candidates. Make your own decision and take the time to compare. The cheapest price is not the only criteria. Read the fine print and if possible try looking into the support forums. They give a great impression of how responsive the staff is.

The market is fierce and full of competition so chances are good you find exactly what you are looking for. This list is purposely in no particular order. I am happy to include more hosts over time. Please leave a comment or contact me. If you are curious which web hosting provider I ended up using, then you can check my resources page. (more…)

April 10th, 2013|Tags: hosting provider, web hosting|

How to Remove Query Strings from Static Resources on WordPress Sites

Google has a great tool to analyze and optimize the speed of your website called PageSpeed insights. One of the recommendations is to “Remove Query Strings from Static Resources“. Those may be in JavaScript and CSS files. In WordPress many scripts and stylesheets include a query string to identify the version. This can cause problems with caching and will lead to increased load times. In your child-themes function.php file add the following code before the closing sign (?>):

 
function hide_wp_version($src) {
global $wp_version;
return str_replace("?ver=$wp_version", '', $src);
}
add_filter('script_loader_src', 'hide_wp_version');
add_filter('style_loader_src', 'hide_wp_version');

After you’ve done that check your site on PageSpeed insights again to make sure you had no typos. I also attached a screenshot of my functions.php: