The blogging round robin

Once upon a time I started a blog. I ran the blog using my own server from the PC in my kitchen. I used the open source software .Text, now Community Server. For a while everything was good. Then I started producing some open source software. I threw that on my server as well. Everything was better.

Then I started to hate my blog. It looked out-of-date. It needed backing up manually.  .Text seem to be going away.  My Internet bandwidth was getting eaten up by downloads and blog-pings. I moved my blog to an ISP. My ISP sucked. I moved ISP's again. I stopped blogging as much. A big chunk of my time was spent being a an admin for my site. In desperation I switched to dasBlog. That was horrible.  Finally I threw out the blog software and tried to write my own, because, well, that would be simpler right? Ha!  Now, all my free time was spent being a site admin and an ASP .NET programmer.

I had dreams of a blog with pictures and video and nicely formatted text. But life got much busier, I started a new job, and I was significantly less inclined to spend my evenings doing what I do all day. Eventually I stopped blogging altogether. And it's not just my blog. I want my own domain name for my e-mail. I want somewhere to put my pictures so I can share them with family and friends. I want access to my name & address book and calendar on-line and in and out of work. I don't want to spend any more time maintaining web sites or dealing with ISP's. And I want to save some money.

So I decided to go with free software.  Wordpress has a nice blogging site. It's seems to have all the features that I want. So I go there and set up a blog.  But the editor sucks and I keep losing posts.  I can't post full size pictures.  I can't easily get my old posts in there.  There's a limited number of designs to choose from.  So I go to Blogger and set up a blog there.  Well, they have an even worse editor and worse designs and no pictures.

I mess around with Flickr and SmugMug for posting pictures, both provide really good online photo sharing but to get full size photo uploads you have to pay.  I set up a community (open) source project on CodePlex which is a really great experience.  Check out Code Runner .NET if you are technically inclined.

Then on day I start poking my ISP (which I still hadn't cancelled) and I notice that they have an option to set up Community Server on my site.  So I click it out of curiosity.  It finishes and I take a look at what it produces, and I'm impressed.  After some investigation I find that Community Server has come a long way since .Text.

So, I'm back to paying $100 a year to my ISP, and I'm basically back where I started again.  Once you start digging, free services aren't free after all.  To get what you really want you usually have to pay.  I decided that I'm sticking with hosting my own site.  As long as Community Server continues to be supported, I think I'll be happy.  I can post pictures and files again.  My ISP is backing up my data.  My site is fast.  I can create blogs for my whole family. 

At least I'm blogging again.