Category: pwn3d

Happy new year!

It’s been a while since I last made an update to this blog. I discovered a new web hosting service that cut our monthly expenses by 1/4! It took a little bit of time but I managed to port all the previous posts back to a self-hosted WordPress setup.

For the entire 2011 I experimented with WordPress.com, Tumblr and Posterous. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

If you’re looking for something quick and easy, use Tumblr. If you want some extensibility, try WordPress.com. If you want to automatically update your other online presences while blogging, Posterous.

Posterous Spaces is a great upgrade

It’s been a week since Posterous rebranded itself as Posterous Spaces and redesigned the Groups function.

In terms of usability as a blog, not much as changed. But if you wanted to use Posterous as a social media replacement then the Spaces rebrand may be just what you’re looking for!

Wow visitors galore

I don’t understand it myself. Since switching to Posterous the amount of people visiting has dramatically increased. It may be some false statistics from search engines, etc. I guess I’ll keep an eye on Analytics for the next little while.

Move complete! The economic and technical advantage of using Tumblr at a glance

Already I have noticed some major improvements of using Tumblr over WordPress. For the past 6 months I switched from a self-hosted WordPress.org solution to WordPress.com as a cost reducing way of having a blog. Owning my content wasn’t as important anymore in the age of XML. 

From a pure cost reduction point of view. I succeeded. I went from paying almost $100 a year to about $25 a year. WordPress.com however charges for domain mapping whereas Tumblr does not. So by moving to Tumblr I saved another $12 a year.

I will be transferring my domain to a different registrar once my BlueHost contract expires (BlueHost domain registration is free as long as you pay the monthly hosting fee, and the contract is 2 years @ $7.99/month or 3 years @ $6.99/month). This way in the end I will be paying $9.99 a year, using name.com as the registrar. For the first year it will be even cheaper because the transfer is only $7.99 and comes with a free 1 year extension. Kind of a way of attracting new customers with existing domains. 

The way WordPress.com handles domain mapping and Tumblr is a little different. WordPress wants you to point the DNS servers directly to theirs. Hence you forfeit DNS control, any subdomains you want to use are out of question. For some people it’s okay, but for many others it is very limiting. If someone wants to use any subdomains and point them at a different service, they’re SOL. 

Tumblr just wants you to change the A mapping to their hosting IP. It can be done in any form you wish. Whether using the root of your domain, or pointing a subdomain, the user has a choice.

The obvious use of having your own DNS control is to map your own subdomains for Google Apps services (mail.name.com pointing at ghs.google.com, etc). Google’s new implementation of Google Apps account’s integration with the rest of Google services makes this trivial however. 

So what will I be doing with this new recovered ability? Well I was thinking of getting a prepaid hosting service and pointing it at a subdomain. Using it for development work and other small projects when I need to. Here’s to hoping NearlyFreeSpeech or a similar prepaid service to support Ruby on Rails or Django in the future. 

I’m sure I will discover new things about Tumblr that I didn’t know about now that I’ve made the switch. Hopefully the move wasn’t in vain (it was a painful migration process that involved using PHP scripts and truncating WordPress XML exports). I will write how I migrated in a future post!

WordPress.org to WordPress.com trial

I have decided a while ago that once my web hosting plan expires I would hop onto a cheaper alternative. Right now I pay $7.99/month which includes unlimited storage, bandwidth and as long as I remain a customer I get free domain registration renewal. But it is still $7.99 a month. In this economy every penny counts.

I realized that I was starting to strap for cash when I wanted to purchase a new Mac during the holiday season. No matter how I squeezed it I would still have to make at least 2 payments to finish paying it off. I’m glad I held off on my purchase as Apple is showing obvious signs for the Arrandale refresh any day now.

Back to my point. I never quite need the unlimited storage space. Yes, hosting your own photos, videos, or whatever you want, for as much as you want is nice. But is it that much better than making use of a free website that has a dedicated community? I already use deviantART, which allows for unlimited uploads and printing. You don’t earn a whole lot on the printing but the idea is sound and the artists appreciates it. I just signed up for Flickr last week as I found out WordPress.com doesn’t allow for plugins, so I couldn’t make use of Fotobook to show my photo albums on Facebook. Having a photostream that feeds into my blog is the next best thing. I acted on that pretty quickly before someone else snatches up my desired username.

Another advantage of being on WordPress.com is the frequency of updates. There are many built-in options that are achieved by using a plug-in in the WP.com hosted blogs such as newer widgets. You’ll never have to worry about compatibilities between themes, plug-ins, etc. The upgrades are also taken care of for you so it’s really just login, write, publish. Whereas often times with the self-hosted WP.org alternative, it’s more like login, upgrade, configure, write, publish.

So the trial now begins. I know of lots of people who have switched from WordPress.com to the self-hosted WordPress.org option. Not a whole lot of people who have gone back the other way. I hope this will work out for my personal use. It is a savings of $7.99/month vs. $20/year (domain registration + wp.com domain addon upgrade).