There are two flavors of the WordPress Content Management System. There’s the wordpress.org self hosted solution – as used for this very blog, and there’s the wordpress.com hosted solution.
I’m normally a glass half full kind of guy, but today, I’m going to talk about one of the big disadvantages that a self hosted wordpress set up presents.
Self hosties are missing out on the community side of wordpress. Sure, we’ve got our own thing going on, and we tap into communities like facebook, twitter and DISQUS, but we don’t seem to have any way of readily tapping into the rich and fascinating community over on the hosted side of the fence.
We have the tools and content to build our own community, and yes, technically we can syndicate and share out content through RSS and offer a ‘follow’ feature, but we can’t at this time, make use of the following features;
- WordPress like, reblog and native wordpress follow
- WordPress toolbar
- Feature in ‘Freshly Pressed‘
- Have our self hosted account persona recognised as being that of a “blogger” in the wordpress community
- Using self hosted account credential to interact with other wordpress content and users
- Have self hosted blog feature on the ‘my blogs’ global dashboard
I’ll admit it. I’m jealous. The hosted community seems to be reading, interacting, sharing and discussing each others content in a very active way using the wordpress.com network. Even blogs who’s content is, to put it politely ‘pedestrian’, gets scores of followers and reblogs, etc on a single “This is what I had for lunch today” type post. Some of the good to brilliant bloggers (of which there are many, for the record) get hundreds of followers, reblogs, likes, etc. It is a buzzing community. One which I lurk on, but can’t properly engage with, as my self hosted content and persona, isn’t integrated.
Of course, I didn’t get to this point of confidently saying ‘no can do’, without a bit of research. The thread I kept coming back to is this one – http://wordpress.org/support/topic/getting-reblog-to-work-with-self-hosted where a moderator essentially slams the door in our face. There are a few others – most of which seem to have been gathering dust for months.
I’ve got an account on wordpress.com – I use it for some of the features on my self hosted set up – like jetpack but, given it’s placeholder status, I don’t want to use that account to interact, or specifically ‘wordpress like’ other blogs.
One of the solutions, would be for me to jump ship. Move DragonDrop.org over to the wordpress.com side of the fence, but I’d be missing out on the flexibility I have with themes (the way it looks and feels) and widgets, etc. Plus, I wouldn’t have the man hours it would realistically take to do that at the moment. I’m too busy blogging.
If you’ve landed here because you’re suffering the same quandary, or better still – if you have the Holy Grail solution of how to integrate wordpress.com community and account features into a wordpress.org self hosted solution, then please, leave a comment.
Closing thoughts – I recently stumbled across some info that was discussing the way wordpress staff up their organisation. The have an actual job function called Happiness Engineers. Polite request: Could us self hosties book in some TLC with one of these people to address the above please?
Hi Matt – eloquent point!
I too feel I am missing out on the ‘community’ aspect by having a self-hosted blog. So much so that I am thinking of moving to Tumblr. There is no direct way of doing this so you have to change to Blogger and then import to tumblr.
However, I digress. What are your thoughts on Tumblr blogs replacing WordPress.org sites?
I am all ears.
Hi Andy, I’m not fully sure I understand your question – but comparing the communities of wordpress.org (self hosted) against tumbler (hosted) solutions is a bit chalk and cheese really.
Horses for courses. Comparing the communities – and the type of content, my own personal take on this is that tumblr (and Pinterest for that matter) seems to be largely made up of re hashers and curators of collections of different stuff, where as wordpress seems to be more about creation of content – people who actually make and say original stuff. Tumbler in a broad brush sense, to me represent more of a copy-paste culture. The technical level of features and potential to architect is much richer in wordpress for what I need – I don’t think I’d use tumblr for anything serious.
Quite like the look of squarespace though at the moment. They have some good licks.
Hi Matt – have you changed the comments box? I am now able to subscribe etc and seem to be able to do a heap lot more to follow you than previously. What plugin is it?
Hi Andy, yep. I’m now using the Jetpack comments front end. Back end is the same, although this one allows a wordpress.com account holder to use their wp account credentials (or twitter, Facebook or free input) to sign.
The main difference for me is the layout, which, I feel presents better – the visitor can simply start typing, then say who they are rather than (old system) fill out personal details first before saying what was on their mind.
have you thought about :-
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress/
id be carfull matt, your disk usage and bandwidth is possibly higher than wp hosting might allow……
Just found a plugin called Gravitar Like that allows you to add the wp like func. 1/3 ain’t bad.
[…] of course, they could like the page before, but not like it in a social networky kind of way. One step closer to being part of the wordpress social network, […]
Searching for the answer so long my eyes are burning and trying to come up with a good reason not to switch over to the .com
I hear ‘ya! I couldn’t figure out why my reblog wouldn’t work. Now I know. We need some self- hosted inclusion!!
Looking for reblog support, too!
Anyone ever find a good answer for this? I’ve figured out how to get WordPress Like but not WordPress Comments or WordPress Reblog (most important) — 🙁
I’m still looking for the solution 🙁
Me too – anyone..
I feel your pain! I have just launched a new blog site on .org self hosted after moving away from .com and am slowly realising how alone it feels on the other side of the fence!
Yessss!!! as soon I started my new self hosted blog my comments are few and far between. Very frustrating. There is a plugin I am going to test called repost that apparently allows this function. Il;l come back and let you know how it went.
Same problem, same desire for a solution. I have several friends on the wp.com side of things that have asked about re blogging some of my content. The lack of a solutions is truly frustrating.
Wow, years after this post, & I’m still looking for a solution to this problem. One thing Matt is definitely right about. Don’t think you’ll find support from the forums. Those moderators are brutal! Sad, I was finding so much success from my ,com site that people pressured me to get a .org saying it will make me more professional. Well, it also makes me more nonexistent! I miss my community!
So here we are in 2016 and it appears there still isn’t a solution to this problem. Someone mentioned elsewhere that there’s a plugin called RepostUs. Has anyone tried this plugin before?
My recommendation is to *not* use Tumblr, or end up with problems like this http://bitshare.cm/news/why-you-should-never-use-tumblr-as-a-professional-blogging-platform/
I understand the struggle! Just got my self-hosted blog a few days ago and I know the feeling of loneliness especially if you’re an newbie blogger trying to find some footing 🙁
Mani @eatweetsleep: how did it go?
Still seeking a solution to this problem.
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