@natmba1 – you do not need a wordpress dot COM account to run buddypress – and I am not sure that you can run BP there – not the last time I checked.
What I suggest is getting your own web hosting account – for 10 or 20$ per month you can run your own (shared) hosting – and put wordpress and buddypress and any other plugins you like into it.
Some places like dreamhost.com (and similar hosting companies) – make it pretty simple to setup a wordpress hosting account and then you can add plugins and themes through the backend admin dashboard.
You will likely end up with an account at wordpress dot ORG – to ask questions about plugins and stuff – but the dot ORG is the free open community and the dot COM is more the commercial thing kind of like wix.. which I am sure you have seen places like that are very limited – running your own system has many more options – but with that comes a bit more learning and responsibility 😉
Thank you so much @djsteveb. I will look at dreamhost.com. Are there any other web hosting sites you recommend?
Thanks again so much for your response.
Natali
@natmba1 – places like dreamhost are good at doign some hand holding with wordpress issues, so I would suggest them, or bluehost – or someone similar who really specializes in WP hosting for those who are new(ish) to the self hosting game – their tech have more knowledge about common wp issues – and they have some extra layers of security that help a bit with common wp things like brute force login / hacking attempts.
Just about any host out there can run wordpress fine – I try to avoid windows hosting platforms – as the setup for running wp quickly and easily just seems smoother with the ‘nix based servers –
I am sure others have good recommendations as well – I will tell you from my recent experiences I am really liking tmdhosting.com – as their support has wowed me this year, and they have strong mod-sec setups to block multiple password fails already running.
Some people look for price first – I say support is more important than anything else. I could give you a long list of hosting places that have completely failed me when it comes to support – and if your site goes down and the server needs to be restarted, you don’t want to wait 48 hours to here back from some level one support guy that does not fix the problem, no matter how cheap the place may be.
Obviously I have not tried every hosting company in the world, so don’t take my experiences as the only voice on this.
most hosting places have one step installs for wordpress these days – like I said earlier, I usually suggest dreamhost for total newbies – but I am more familiar with the standard cpanel admin server backend that places like tmdhosting and hostgator provide – I get a bit lost in the dreamhost panel sometimes – but if you have not already gotten used to finding things in either panel – then that would not be an issue for you.
The good thing is that it’s pretty easy to change your wordpress hosting to a different place if your needs change – so I don’t think you need to worry too much about picking the perfect place right off the bat.
I should probably check to see if I have an bonus code or something from these hosting places, but not sure it would jive with the bp group to provide you with an affiliate link where I got a kickback if you signed up.
If you were looking for dedicated servers I’d have more suggestions – but I don’t think you’ll need that kind of server power for a while (if ever)
