Yet again the pathetically bad “new and improved” WordPress ideas have made the site nigh on impossible to use. The media uploader has decided to stop accepting jpeg images, so I have to go into site admin, choose to change the theme, and customise the new theme to be able to upload images. I’m really becoming sick and tired of “improvements” which make the site crap.
Come on WordPress, sort yourselves out.
A Novice Woodturner Learning and Sharing Woodturning Skills
Woodturning as a hobby on a very tight (zero) budget
New novel, DAISY ON THE OUTER LINE, out November 5th!
Extremely Exquisite Razors
Woodworking my way through depression
(mostly) unplugged woodworking
Woodturning videos and Project tutorials
Recreation - Re-creation: Things made by Matt Rae
Woodworking Adventures in a Small Space
Discovering the Gift
Greenwood Working & Woodland Crafts
Musings on and about Woodworking and Art
Working at home
Random Musings from a Random person
a man searching for la dolce vita
Adventures in Turning 
How much do you pay for this service Tom?
Cost is immaterial. To say it’s OK to provide a poor service because it’s free is a complete cop-out. Is it OK to poison people at a homeless shelter because the food is free? I make nothing from my blog, and have no monetary interest. WordPress on the other hand make money from monetised advertising on my blog. When each “improvement” makes something more and more frustrating to use, people will vote with their feet. There are plenty other platforms out there, and judging by the lack of responses in the support forums to pleas from paying customers relying on this for business, it looks more and more like the company have no interest in keeping users happy.
I am not suggesting that accepting a poor service because it’s free is acceptable. It’s not.
Whilst I understand what you’re saying, please think very carefully before deciding to move. I self-host all my websites (all are WP based) but I have used wp.com as well as others in the past and wordpress.com is still the best platform (in my humble opinion) for blogging. Blogger (Google’s platform) is so much worse than wordpress that I rarely visit blogs that are hosted there (if I can help it!)
Self hosting my websites gives me full control over updates, theming and plugins. It costs me very little (£60 per year for hosting and £11 per year per domain name).