Thanks for your comments, I appreciate them. Sure you can map your domain, but there remains a big difference in the ability to customize a WordPress.com blog. I started out on a .com and got frustrated quickly with ToS violations and the lack of plugins and the ability to use Javascript. The functionality that WordPress.org offers makes it the obvious choice in my opinion. Even if you have to pay for hosting, etc.

I also think of those folks who use WordPress.com, have links and Google ranking built up and then decide a .org is the better choice for them…I think those folks would have been better off with the .org option in the beginning. The temporary re-directs you offer, simply aren’t the best ‘fix’ out there in that case.

While posts are probably easy peasy to migrate, sidebar widgets and text are left in the dust.

And regardless of whether you use domain mapping or not, I assume you are still bound by Automattic’s ToS. A blog with content that has true business value should never be left to the mercy of those kinds of terms.

WordPress.com IS perfect for some people. I’m just not one of them.

Again, thanks for your clarifications.

I work at Automattic and just wanted to point out a couple of quick clarifications.

>Your blog is not on your domain.

Actually you can map a domain so you can have “mydomain.com” ( in fact my blog http://raanan.com is on WordPress.com ). More info here: http://support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/

>What if THEN you decide you want to move your blog to the
>self-hosted .org option. Migration is a bitch if you do it youreslf

Since we use WordPress to power WordPress.com, we go out of our way to make sure exporting and importing are seamless and very easy to do. If you wanted to move your blog all you would need to do is go to your dashboard and click “export”, and then click “import” on your new WordPress blog. All your posts, content, and comments would be moved over — more details here: http://support.wordpress.com/export/

cheers.