I have created many websites and blogs. Many of which have diminished and faded away due to my lack of motivation, time and interest. In the end, my laziness has the last laugh and boredom dominates the website and eventually the dust settles in. So… why go to all that extra effort to setup another website if it is just going to flop? Perhaps this site will be different?
However, most the other websites I created were 1) self hosted 2) self-maintained and 3) self-ish. Please allow me to explain.
1) Self Hosted
At many times I would start a new blog or website to experiment with the content management system (CMS) and setup a server and other applications (apache, php, etc). It was all just a big cluster of experimenting, which is how I learn - by doing. In this sense, websites were a good way to learn technology and how to administrate that technology. A consequence of experimenting though is that things break - a lot - and thus websites became a chore.
2) Self Maintained
Did I mention that this self-hosted server was a box sitting in my closet. So what if the electricity goes off or that server hard drive crashes (or a dog pees on it)? I managed to use VMWare to help consolidate electricity costs but that box still used some electricity 24/7.
Cost was not the only concerns I had. Security. In order to host a website I needed to punch a hole in my firewall thus allowing security breaches into my home. What advantages do I gain by giving hackers/skiddies a DNS location and open ports to my home? Nothing much, the more I think about it.
3) Selfish
This hasn’t changed much. I’m still a selfish person and thus I crave free website hosting. I desire an easy way to update the website. Put simply: I can still be lazy and have a website. This is how I came about Weebly, and man, do I love it! Weebly allows me as a web developer to slap up a website in minutes and for free! It goes above and beyond any CMS I have ever used (and I have used too many to count) with the drag and drop “widget style” interface. Don’t get me wrong, there are still many improvements to be made on Weebly, but on many levels, Weebly is doing it right!