Since I discovered WordPress in 2004, I’ve always been self-hosted. It gave me the freedom to experiment with code and do pretty much whatever I wanted — which I enjoyed when I was in school and had so much time to devote to a hobby.
Now that I have a full-time job as a junior developer, the last thing I want to do in my free time is more coding. While that might sound counter-intuitive, I believe it’s healthier to “leave work at work” and do other things at home to avoid burnout. After being self-hosted for 14 years, I’ve decided to make the move to WordPress.com! Here are my reasons, besides the obvious insider advantage:
- Can focus more on the look and content of my site rather than the back-end and server configuration
- If I get tired of my theme, I can easily change it and avoid stagnation … instead of waiting around ’til I have time to make graphics and code a new one
- All the plugins I used while self-hosted are automatically included
- Not needing to worry about security, backups, SSL, or updating core/plugins
- I bought a Premium plan, so I have more advanced customization options and the ability to make CSS changes
- The cost of domain registration, hosting, privacy protection, and SSL is only slightly less than a Premium plan
- I like the Reader and “following” features here better
Now, this doesn’t mean I won’t ever code outside of work again … if I need something WordPress.com doesn’t provide, there’s always CodePen or my local environment. In closing, change is good!
