I want to take a moment to amplify what Keith just pointed at.
The average person does not understand the difference between “Internet Explorer” and “Windows Explorer” and Microsoft seems to think that’s a Good Thing as they do their best to blur the difference.
Apple iOS devices offer iCloud and no local storage, so people get confused about where things get saved as well.
But you can run Google Drive and Dropbox apps inside of iOS as well as MacOS and Windows, which causes even further confusion.
So when someone wants to set up something like a WP blog, they have no frigging clue where it lives, why they need “hosting”, or why they can’t make it work on Windows or their iPad. Why do they need a separate “hosting” account if they already have stuff “in the cloud”? Why can’t they just upload it to iCloud, Google Drive, their Microsoft cloud, or something they already have and just use that?
Why do they need this “FTP thing” to access it if they can get to Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud directly? (Heck, I just use the File Manager built into cPanel for most things instead of FTP, but I’m amazed at how many technically-adept users don’t even know it exists!)
There are now a couple of Wordpress admin apps for iOS, but they only work on existing sites — you have to set your blog up first, on a hosting account somewhere, then set up a domain name, and that’s the biggest hurdle for many non-techie users. It’s not like you just install that app, click a button, and viola! You have a new WP site running somewhere. That may happen eventually, but we’re a long way from that happening today.
There’s also this unending confusion about domain names vs. hosting and registrars vs. host providers. It doesn’t help that most registrars are getting into the hosting game.
The guy who started this thread said he wants to move his domain AND hosting … because he thinks they’re tied together, when in fact they’re completely unrelated. Again, people don’t understand these relationships, and they get confused as hell when you try to explain this stuff to them.
This is how MOST non-techie users think.
There's also a huge disconnect people have with a lot of hosted services in general, and WP in particular, when it comes to “Admin mode” vs. “Visitor mode”.
The apps used most frequently by people are things like Word and Excel. You just open them, type stuff in, and save them. Maybe you print something eventually. There’s no difference between “admin” (or “editing”) mode and “viewing” mode.
Google and now MS are blurring this line so you can have documents and spreadsheets “in the cloud” that can be edited by multiple people at once. This often produces confusion among users who end up wanting to “lock” a document to prevent others from modifying it. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple — you have to go in and adjust “access permissions” for individual users! WTF?
These cloud-based services are solving some common problems people have by blurring the line between local storage and cloud storage, but they’re not doing people any favors when it comes to applications that, for reasons that are far from obvious to average users, cannot be installed or used in these same cloud-based accounts.
You can install WP into Amazon S3, but not iCloud or Azure. How frigging confusing is THAT?
Most people just don’t understand the notion of “hosting” as distinct from “cloud storage”, especially when it appears they need to use this “FTP thing” to access their hosting account’s file system instead of the myriad of ways that already exist.
To be honest, most average users still don’t understand the difference between “RAM” and “disk storage”. iOS only talks about “storage”, and iCloud even makes THAT irrelevant.
Installing hosted apps need to be as simple as installing an admin app on a device and configuring it. And making it accessible via a domain name needs to be little more than finding an available name and clicking a button to get it and attach it to your hosted app. Everything else is just noise to most people.
All of my close friends are non technical. I tried to teach a couple of them how to manage their own hosting and it did not work. I tried to teach them simple stuff like how to FTP.
I think GoDaddy, HostGator... etc are the best it gets for them. One lost his blog do to some tech issue at GoDaddy. AND that is going to happen. I hosted with GoDaddy for years. I figured I could get away with it because I am technical and had backups and could restore my website in 10 minutes.
If all they have is a simple website or a blog then they need to know a handful of information. One is they need someone technical they can lean on such as a consultant. They need to do backups to avoid lost data. WordPress plugin with S3. They will probably need help with that.
I think we take for granted what it takes to own and manage a website. I think it is difficult for the average person.
