If you have ever had a blog or a website, you know that it takes a certain amount of patience and persistence to maintain it. Not to mention money. I know there are free blog sites available, but I’ve had this one for a long time, I’m quite attached to it and I understand how to use it (for the most part), so I’m loathe to start over with something new.
However, I’m coming up against some issues right now that are making me look again at the possibility of deleting my website and trying something else. It’s mostly about renewing subscriptions to various plugins and storage sites. For instance, I use Dropbox to keep a back-up of my whole site (something that came in handy a couple of years ago when my site crashed), but it’s almost the only thing I use it for, which means I’m using a tiny fraction of its storage capacity for the whopping price of $155.88 per year! I also pay for a plugin that does the backup, which is 70$ a year. The site is hosted by Bluehost and that costs something every year (I’d have to check and I really don’t feel like it right now) and renewing my domain name costs something. It’s kind of ridiculous for a blog I only write every couple of weeks for my own pleasure, and, hopefully, the pleasure of the readers who come by.
Yes, I’m quite fond of my site and I’ve put lots of time and energy (and money) into it, but, is it worth it going forward? I’m going to retire soon and the costs related to maintaining this site will become more onerous when I’m on a pension. I hesitate because I hate to lose all my old posts. I guess I could copy and paste a bunch of them into my computer for posterity, and that’s what I might do. That would take time I’m not sure I’m ready to put into it, but it could happen.
I’m writing this post so that if you are a subscriber you’ll know what happened, since I may decide to close this site quite suddenly. I will do my best to inform people (most likely via Facebook) about it and to let you know whether I’m going to pop up somewhere else on the Internet.
In case this is my last post, I want to thank you all for coming by over the years and reading my ramblings. I appreciate you all very much and now that I’m really thinking of cancelling everything, I’m feeling quite emotional. Well, it’s still up in the air…
I love to hear from you!