Eighteen years ago I got on an airplane and spent an hour trying to ignore the moronic ramblings of the older man who was sitting next to me.
Somewhere in the midst of his unwanted advice I turned to him and asked him if his tie needed to be loosened so that oxygen would reach his brain.
Who knew 15 years later that these moronic ramblings would set me on the path that led me into Treachery on the High Seas Of Web Hosting & Social Media.
Self Hosted Blogs and Digital Sharecroppers
You don’t have to look hard through the pages here to see I advise against being a digital sharecropper. Digital sharecropping is often described publishing your content on a 3rd party site that you don’t own.
It is considered to be risky behavior because when you don’t own the space you have limited control over what happens there. For example let’s say you rent a piece of land and build a very successful restaurant on it.
Critics love it and it turns into something special, a place everyone likes to frequent. Life is moving along just swimmingly and then one day you receive notice the owner of the land has decided to develop it and you are being kicked out.
You want to scream because you have no idea where you are going to move to. All of your time and effort has been spent building this space and now it is gone.
That scenario is why several years ago I moved into the world of self hosted blogging. I figured it was better paying a couple of bucks to o to control my hosting so I would have greater control of my digital destiny.
Life Lessons of A Crazy Old Man
Many of you will be shocked to hear I was a very stubborn twenty-something and I didn’t always respond well to criticism. I thought I did but looking back it is clear to me I wasn’t as secure in my abilities as I could have been so I didn’t always listen as well as I could have.
The old man in this example was a marketing consultant who was working on a project for the company I worked for. He and I were boarded that plane to give a presentation to a client and the reason he laid into me was because I didn’t take the presentation on the plane.
It was a day trip and I didn’t want a carry on so I checked the presentation materials and prepared to relax. He rightly told me it was a mistake and that I should have taken it on board with me because I couldn’t control what happened to checked baggage.
He was very short with me and since he was an older guy the lecture felt like he was treating me like his son and I already had a father who I didn’t want to be lectured by either.
Anyway something he said must have sunk in because all those years later I heard about a blogger who lost everything because they weren’t self hosted. I remembered that discussion and moved to a self hosted blog.
Web Hosting Blues
In early January my host said I was abusing resources and took down my blog without warning. We worked with their tech support to make some changes & they put the blog back up.
Things were fine again until a couple of weeks ago when they took me down. Since I had made the changes they asked for and they claimed I had the same problem I decided it was time to change hosts.
The first replacement host didn’t work out because they had a tech issue that started with my account before I moved the blog over. It wasn’t a good way to start a relationship so I canceled my order.
Second company came highly recommended and overall has been pretty good but it took more time and work than I would have liked to move the blog. I was down for almost a week, but a good friend helped me sort through some of the tech mess and we got it done.
The Future Is Bright
The dust has mostly settled here but you might see some more changes. I am optimistic about the future with this company but the experience has definitely made me want to do more to improve my tech skills.
Going to spend some more time learning about SQL and how to take care of some more back end stuff. Writing is still where I’ll focus most of my energy but it never hurts to know enough to take care of basic issues and or be knowledgeable enough to figure out who to go to for answers when things aren’t working.
What do you think?
timbo19731 Hi Tim,
Yeah, I know Hostgator because that is who I was with. I don’t know why things went astray with them but they did and I didn’t get any real help from them which is part of why I moved.
That conversation about plugins is what made me go mad because I did as they asked and months went by before a new problem came and they told me it was the “old one.”
Anyway, I am with Synthesis now and thus far it has been great.
Glad to hear you’ve got your hosting sorted Josh.
I’ve been with HostGator all my online life but I know there’s going to come a day when shared hosting is just not going to be enough for me.
I’ve had a couple of run-ins with HostGator about using too many resources but I’ve managed to get things settled down again by getting rid of loads of plugins.
I dread the day that I have to move to another host. I’m really going to need to read up on that before I contemplate anything like a move to VPS or anything!