Next week will probably see the creation of the millionth blog at WordPress.com. Michael Arrington noted this, along with some other numbers. I won’t comment here about Michael’s numbers, since I want to move on to one of my own.
Last week saw the 100th day of this blog, which I created on Feb 1. It wasn’t my first WordPress blog, or even my first blog at WordPress.com, but it is my current blog, and it is only since Feb 1 that WordPress.com has been the home for my main blog.
So how is WordPress.com for someone who has previously used other blogging tools, including WordPress classic, and other hosts? It is excellent for my current purposes.
Right now, I want to focus my blogging time on blogging itself, rather than on running the blog. So, after doing the initial choice of theme, customization of CSS, and setup of sidebar widgets, I’ve just been adding content. At WordPress.com, I haven’t had to bother with installing new versions of the software, and the hosting has been robust.
WordPress.com is not for people who want complete control over their blog. It’s not meant to be. That’s what WordPress classic is for.
Having said that, I do have my wishlist for WordPress.com, and some of the things on it are there because I miss them from my WordPress classic days.
- Tagging. I really miss the tags plugin I used to use. The case that tags and categories are different has been made by Lorelle, and by many others, so I won’t restate it here.
- Easy links to, and images from, Amazon. Again, this is something for which I used to use a plugin. For example, when I blog about a book, I think it’s helpful for readers to see an image of the cover with a link to a page providing reviews. I understand WordPress.com’s policy against ads and the like, but it’s something I hope will become less draconian.
- How about allowing links to approved affiliate programs, with a split of revenue between WordPress.com and the blogger?
- I’d like more extensive support for OpenID. I made quite a few posts about this a couple of months ago. WordPress.com produces OpenIDs, but does not currently comsume OpenIDs (i.e. you can’t comment or post on WordPress.com using an OpenID produced elsewhere).
- There are a bunch of other things, but they are less important. For example, I support the thumbnail and image resizing idea under consideration via the WordPress ideas forum, but it’s not nearly as big a deal to me as tagging.
To WordPress.com, thanks for the hundred days, and congratulations on the million blogs.