WordPress.com Will Be Better With Domain Hosting

As the platform for this blog, wordpress.com, is in beta and supplied free of charge, it’s might seem churlish to complain of lack of features. Nevertheless, and allowing for the fine features it has, I can’t help feeling that the WordPress people are letting the side down by not having set up an arrangement for domain hosting.

I’ve actually registered the domain myenglishlab.com and, all other things being equal, would like to be able to link it to this blog. The other day I started to spell out to a friend the current web address (url), https://coachdes.wordpress.com – I was half way through when he said, “too long”. I agree – it would have been so much easier to say “myenglishlab (all one word) dot com”.

There is a related limitation in not having your own domain from the outset, when your domain name is tied to a third party web hosting service, such as yourname.hostingservice.com (or in the case of this blog coachdes.wordpress.com). That’s the problem of losing readers and search engine recognition. Darren Rowse has posted about that on his ProBlogger blog and the moral of that piece seems to be that the sooner you get your own domain and stick to it, the better. 

One option for this site would be to use the downloadable version of WordPress and install it on my own server, then use my own domain name. I’ve been more than a bit frustrated about the challenges that offers to me as a non-technical person in setting up my deswalsh.com site, but I may be close to having figured out enough what needs to be done for this to be a realistic option for My English Lab. And the deal I’m on with my web hosting service, HostingBay, means that making that move will only cost me about AU$20 (US$15).