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Powered by the open source software used to run millions of sites on the internet, WordPress.com allows users to quickly set-up their site and begin creating content, all without having to worry about any coding or hosting.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Optional free hosting
WordPress offers free hosting under a wordpress.com subdomain. This option eliminates the need for setting up the CMS yourself and is reasonably secure, as WP uses multiple servers to back your site up. Additionally, for a fee, you can even set up your own custom domain name.
Pro Widely used
According to some statistics, WP powers a fifth of the Internet. It means that there are resources for everything. There's excellent community support and a large number of professionally-developed themes (either free or for a one-time fee) that give you a great look starting out. Wordpress.com is not just hosted and managed wordpress - it runs on a special, automatically scalable cloud platform and is now used by many high-traffic sites (such as the NYTimes blogs) as well as millions of smaller-scale users.
Cons
Con Wordpress.com does not allow plugins.
Some managed hosting companies permit a "curated" set of plugins but wordpress.com prohibits all plugins for security, as well as for creating a generally faster delivery system.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Con Database CMS can be overkill
Wordpress is an overkill when all one might need for a simple web presence is a flat-file CMS (Pulse, etc...) or none at all.