[mpol]

No, not wordpress.com, but a managed hosting provider. That means that wordpress core is managed by the hosting company, but you can install any plugin or theme. In the article they compared it to wordpress.com, so I'm sure it's not about that.

[erellsworth]

Wow, you're right. It looks like they are talking about some other managed service.

That makes the post even more meaningless since they don't even say what managed service they are using. It seems they are complaining about what some unnamed managed service is charging them and framing it as criticism of WordPress.

[Gazoo101]

The point is to comment on vanilla Wordpress itself. I fail to see how the managed service I'm using is relevant?

Where exactly in the article am I complaining about being charged for having someone manage my backend?

[camillomiller]

What do you even mean by vanilla wordpress? Get a hosting service with a DB for a couple bucks a month, install wordpress, do whatever you want with it by following the wonderful documentation that is anywhere on the internet. What else is there to talk about?

[erellsworth]

Well, if you're talking about vanilla WordPress, the article doesn't make any sense. Vanilla WordPress is completely free. There are no fees for adding different fonts or any of the other things you say you were charged for. So if it's not a managed service charging you those fees, where are they coming from?

[Gazoo101]

The fees are coming from turn-key solutions that offer to solve the issues I note in the article, e.g. paid themes or paid plug-ins.

I've made sure to more explicitly motivate the intent of switching to Wordpress being to reduce custom code and on-going maintenance, in the article.