After first look and the quick setup at WordPress.com (I learned meanwhile that there is a WordPress.com and a WordPress.org), I became picky:
- what happens if I would like to move the blog to my own host?
- why there is no meta keywords, descriptions tags in my posts?
- why I can’t add AddSense to my posts?
- why I don’t have an FTP access or a similar file manager?
- there are any .NET options?
- how to prevent spam? (actually, this is more a plus for WordPress.com)
Quickly went through them:
1. There is an xml import/export between blog engines. But moving your image library is not so easy. Even if the import tries to get the files from posts, for me it didn’t worked (timeout or permissions denied errors). Also, there is no quick and friendly 301 redirection (supposing you’ll have a successful blog, you’ll want to preserve your SEO efforts).
2. There are plug-ins which helps with the SEO (which includes meta tags in your posts). But WordPress.com doesn’t allow adding new plug-ins (quit understandable somehow).
3. That’s funny. There are also plug-ins for adding your AddSense links (but, remember, WordPress.com doesn’t allow plug-ins). But some other folks claims that WordPress.com itself use your blog for AddSense.
4. See point 1). I can’t move the media library by hand.
5. Finally, I was hoping to find an easier solution for .NET. Of course, I tried BlogEngine.Net. Works OK but the community is smaller and less active. I have to admit (being a Microsoft developer) that the WordPress is a better option.
6. There is a plug-in, Akismet, which check comments against a web service. Which is good because the user is not challenged and you benefit from all community support. The good thing about subscribing to WordPress.com is the API key, used by that plug-in to identify you.
So, last but not least, that WordPress installation is on IIS 6, PHP 5.2.6 (on a shared provider) and it worked from the first shot.
Pretty good learning session for my very first half day of blogging.