Help please - wp.com vs self hosted

[pebbles77]

Ok, I'm a newbie, just been blogging for a few weeks and have a .com site (although I paid for it to be www.pressiesbypebbles.com rather than including the .wordpress bit.

Anyway I've been seeing a lot on twitter about people wanting to go to self hosting and that it allows plugins and freedom

Please please please in easy 12 year old terms (I'm not 12 years old but have a technical brain of a 12 year old) can you explain to me:

Why would I (with the blog that I have) want to move to sh?
Would I be able to keep my site address or would it have to change to a .org?
What's a plugin?

Thank you very much in advance

Pebbles

You would want to move because it gives you the chance to customize your blog 100%.

You would keep your current domain.

A plugin is a piece of software written by others, usually free, that adds functionality and personality to your blog.

Don't feel under any pressure to go self-hosted if you're happy with your blog as it is. I manage lots of blogs for various people on Wordpress including my own, they are all completely different, and I find the free version of Wordpress totally adequate for what I want to do, with the odd paid-for extra such as buying a customer domain name. Self-hosted brings a lot of extra responsibility such as having to back everything up all the time and that in itself is enough to put me off! Do what suits you best. Your blog looks perfectly fine to me - and I'm not just saying that because I've just spotted my own pic on there indicating you're following my blog - thank you very much! :) There's lots more you could do with it if you wanted to, while staying with .com, so don't worry - just enjoy it!

Backing up a blog takes about 2 seconds and is really easy so please do not let that put you off going self hosted if you want!

Seriously, YoungDebbie, what exactly do you think you need to do that is so difficult if you self host? Most of the self hosts I know don't know anything about tech, they just use it so they can have all the plug ins that you can't have with WP hosted.

Thanks so much YoungDebbie and ZombTEE for your advice. I think at the moment I'm getting out of it what I want as I'm just starting out but I may investigate further when I start selling my goodies perhaps?

So much to learn ... am loving it though

Thanks again