What can you do with wordpress.com

As of late August, wordpress.com is still under beta testing and a few invites have been handed out to people inviting them to test drive the new site. When it gets up and running, it will be very exciting. But for now, what can you do, or not do, with your WordPress.com site?

Basically, almost anything you want. There are some limitations. Let’s start with the “things you can do” list.

The wordpress.com site is run by the amazing WordPress MU designed to be run on a single site with multiple users blogging on their own individual site. While it can be used to set up multiple blogs on an individual’s site, it is really designed for the corporate company or host server to manage hundreds, even thousands of WordPress sites. It is powered by WordPress 1.6 alpha, which means it is still under development.

With wordpress.com you can set up a working blog within seconds. No more dealing with setting up the database and running install – all that work is done for you. You just sign in with your user name and password.

To set it up, go into Users and Options and set up your user profile with the Blog site name and your author and contact information. Then switch easily to the Presentation panel to choose from the various Themes. Then click WRITE and write your first post and you are now officially a blogger.

You can write about anything you want, though some people are choosing to write about WordPress, since it is in the URL, but you can write about any topic.

You can upload images, though you are limited, right now, to a total of 15 megabytes. That’s plenty for thumbnails and low resolution images to get you started. When you upload the image, you get a choice to resize the saved image as it is or with two different “thumbnail” sizes or a custom size. When you upload the file, the link to the file is provided to copy and paste into your post.

You can easily set up categories and post now or set the posts to publish in the future, just as you can with the traditional WordPress. In fact, a lot of what you can do is similar to what you can do with WordPress 1.5, just with a slightly different looking interface, but nothing that is dramatically different. For the most part, WordPress users are going to really love the new interface and adapt quite easily. It’s cleaner and, in many ways, easier to use.

The new WYSIWYG HTML editor is available which basically allows you to see a semi-formatted view of what you are writing. You can see the font styles and the images, but currently, they reflect a simple HTML layout rather than your Theme. Some Theme CSS styles may be incorporated in the future, I hope.

You can choose from the WYSIWYG Dynamic Editing screen or choose the HTML version which is what WordPress users are more accustomed to. With the Dynamic Editing, you can see the image in the editing window when you add it. You can click on it and move it around or change the properties. When you add the image, you are given the option of adding its positioning on the page, which is a very nice addition. Links look like links and headings look like headings.

The Post Preview is still there and it currently is the same view as the traditional WordPress version, keeping to a simple non-styled layout with the images so you can read through easily to look for grammar and spelling errors.

There are some very sweet new features that will be awesome once they are finalized, and so there is much to look forward to in the new version, but for now, let’s focus on what you can, and can’t, do on wordpress.com.

The focus for WordPress has always been to concentrate the user on the content, not the code underneath, and this is what the new version does. It keeps your eye on the prize, the writing and images, so you can blog to your heart’s content and start putting your new WordPress site to the test.

What can you NOT do with wordpress.com?

Until WordPress 1.6 becomes more stable, then there will be few limits to what you can do. As with any early software version under development, bugs are found and fixed as part of the testing and development. So not all of the functions and features you may be accustomed to using in WordPress will be available.

And because wordpress.com is still a test site for WordPress MU, there are limits on what you can do, too.

It begins with a 15 megabyte limit on images. The File Upload panel keeps a running total of the amount of hard drive storage space you have left. Since the images associated with the WordPress Theme are not part of that total, this is the limit for the files you add to the site. Images exceeding 300K will not be permitted. Since typical website images run less than 60K for fast loading, then this isn’t a problem. If you are determined to have a photoblog on wordpress.com, the free blog site will not be enough for you. For everyone else, it’s plenty.

You are limited to only a few tested Themes, the ones found at WordPress Extend Themes. Once you have chosen a Theme, you can’t tweak it or change it. That might be available in the future, but for now, you pick the Theme and live with the design. They are top quality designs, and some are award winners from the recent Theme contests, but it’s annoying to want to change just one little thing and you can’t. I’d sure just like the ability to change the header image.

Currently, the blogroll is totally set by wordpress.com and while you can add to it, the Links Manager panel is still undergoing development and editing and deleting on the Links list is still under construction.

As the underlying programming code continues development, the pages change from day to day with the new versions. One day there were two quicktag rows of buttons, one for HTML and one for Dynamic Editing, and the next there were none.

This is part of the “fun” of watching the program develop. There are all kinds of surprises, some good and some annoying, during the process. Still, from the look of things, this is going to be awesome.

So, what can and can’t you do with your wordpress.com site? Anything you want and tomorrow, you might be able to do even more.

UPDATE: wordpress.com users got a bonus recently. The 15 megs of server storage space has been increased to 25 megs. That’s not a lot for a full blown photoblog, but it is more than plenty for just about everything else. Also, all usage of javascript, CSS, and some HTML tags within the post area have been disabled. This is only for wordpress.com sites. If you are using a WordPressMU driven site, the hosts may allow the use of javascript, CSS, and all or some HTML tags. It’s up to the host. The reason given is that javascript and some tags open the site up to security risks which may be outside the control of the host server, which carries some responsiblity for what you do on your blog, as well as for the other bloggers on the site. WordPressMU is about multiple users using one core program, not multiple versions of the program.

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