Posted from Morristown, New Jersey, United States.
This morning, I came across a rather interesting post focusing on WordPress themes. It’s a known fact that many of the blogs that are in the tournament are hosted by WordPress.com. But one of the things that author failed to mention that these limitations doesn’t necessarily apply to WordPress in general, but only on WordPress.com blogs.
One of the things that bother me about WordPress.com besides the fact that you must login just to comment is the severe limitations on how much you can customize a theme. Sure, there are some themes that have an array of customization options like Twenty Ten/Eleven, but others don’t. As a result, blogs look about the same, which bothers some people. To make it more troubling, the Custom Design upgrade costs $30 a year. It’s expensive, especially if you add the domain mapping costing about $18. For 2 years, you will pay about 96 dollars ($48 dollars a year), which is enough to get shared hosting if you pay a little more.
Although WordPress.com is a decent platform if you want to blog without spending anything or maintaining a self installation. However, if you grow and become popular, you might realize the limitations. This is when it’s a good time to get self hosted. There are some places where you can host your blog for free such as Kokidokom and others as long it’s related to Anime in some way. Although self-hosted installations take some effort to maintain (and you have to make backups), they are worth it in the long-term as there are more options to customize.
Niles on 
