Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Space/Audio Upgrades—5GB, 15GB, and 25GB
A WordPress.com blog includes 3GB of free storage, which is a very strong offering. The price for
space upgrades is about $20 for 5GB ($4 per GB), $50 for 15GB ($3.33 per GB), and $90 for 25GB
($3.60 per GB—hey, the cost per GB just went up, not down, with size!). Given how hard your
blog(s) will be working WordPress's servers if you have this kind of storage, these seem like reason-
able costs.
The frustrating part is that WordPress requires you to buy at least one space upgrade to support
audio. Without it, you can't upload any audio file type to your blog.
For smaller blogs, you could almost certainly fit the actual audio file(s), along with your text and
image files, in your 3GB free allocation. You're really paying for the capability to upload audio files
and streaming support for delivering them.
Of course, many people aren't going to do this just to experiment with audio; you'll host the audio
files somewhere else instead. This, though, is getting you into the same hosting concerns that
you're trying to avoid by staying on WordPress.com instead of moving to WordPress.org, which can
be an awkward problem if you want to experiment with audio.
WordPress.org contrast
: You negotiate disk space costs with your hosting provider, as well as sup-
port for streaming audio. Often this works in your favor, but these costs might be high, or the
quality of service might be low, in some cases.
VideoPress Upgrade
You can't upload video to your WordPress.com blog at all without purchasing a VideoPress upgrade
for roughly $60 per year.
VideoPress is an impressive service that seems designed and priced for moderately large-scale
operators. If you want to experiment, or host just a few videos, you're much better off hosting them
on YouTube or your own server, then linking to the video from within your WordPress blog, as
described in this chapter.
WordPress.org contrast
: As with audio, you negotiate disk space costs with your hosting provider,
as well as support for streaming video.
Domain Names
You can add a domain name to your blog for roughly $15 per year. (See the section “Getting a Good
Domain Name,” later in this chapter.) You can get domain names much more cheaply elsewhere,
but not as easily, nor as well integrated with your WordPress blog.
WordPress does not provide help in finding a suitable domain name. Some domain name search
sites play tricks on you, such as reserving a domain name for several days just after you search for
it. This has the effect of making you think it's been taken by someone else if you try to buy it else-
where and see it gone. Even if you understand the trick, you have to buy the domain from the place
that reserved the domain name.
