This was the year I finally started looking at my website costs. Ouch. I have managed to try a number of services over the years, and there really is no consistency on pricing. Also, I tend to leave sites in place years longer than they need to be.
For websites, I love WordPress as a development and content management system. You can use the commercial version and pay to have your domain routed, pay to have ads removed, pay to have email, pay, pay, pay.
You can pay GoDaddy to host WordPress for you – it’s not the commercial version, so there are not as many options, but it’s cheaper. It’s just you have to do much of the maintenance yourself. This should not be a problem because I am in IT, but I am also busy.
You can pay Namecheap to host WordPress for you – it’s cheaper than GoDaddy and WordPress, and they keep the software updated. You do have to do something about spam yourself.
So, I’m migrating to Namecheap, site by site. The other advantage is that their website charges are less, as well.
Now, I’m trying to combine all of my WordPress sites into one, and just point to the individual sites from the different domains. That’s the ultimate goal.
I have written a lot of crap over the years. Keyword: crap. Still, I think it should be saved for posterity – if nothing else, as a warning to others, or for bloggers to learn by example, because a bad example is still an example.
Stay tuned.