Most of you won’t know this, but I’ve had a website – a proper website – for about 10 years.
The picture above is what my website used to look like. As you can see, there was no standard navigation, however all the doorways, and most of the graphical objects led to pages of content.
It took me absolutely ages to hand-code that website, and of course I thought I’d been incredibly clever. Sadly the few people who actually found it had no idea what to do with it.
When I added the Awaba Training Services side to the website I made it much more user friendly, but I rarely had any visitors so it didn’t really matter. I kept the website going out of nostalgia, and the emails associated with it. After so many years, those emails were my link to just about everything on the net and beyond. Unfortunately they were also costing me $20 a month in hosting fees.
[Every website needs three things – a domain name, a web host, and the html files that determine how the website will function and what it will look like. Having your website ‘hosted’ is like paying rent on an apartment or something].
I knew I needed to find a cheaper alternative, but I was daunted by the hassle of moving and setting everything up again. And then one fine day I had an epiphany – I didn’t really need the website, I just needed the domain name and the hosting. This is what my webpage looks like now :
That ‘Future home…’ bit is rather optimistic as I’m pretty sure I won’t ever reinstall the old website, and I can’t afford to have a new, shiny one built. Still, the good news is that I’ve moved to a webhost that only costs me $12 for a whole year, and I managed to get all my old emails working again. Getting to this point, however, was awful.
Let me say that I truly appreciate the super cheap hosting provided by GoDaddy, but all their support pages must have been written by a programmer who assumed everyone would know how to do things. I’m not dumb, but the lack of instructions made me feel like a complete moron, and sent my stress levels through the roof for 2 days. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Anyway, I finally accomplished what I set out to do so now I’m saying a fond farewell to my lovely purple website – goodbye, goodbye, I loved you well, but all things come to an end eventually. RIP!
cheers
Meeks
Authors' favourite books
NANO 2012
June 24th, 2014 at 1:15 pm
I have a beautiful website http://www.chkarasilverwolf.com that my friend created as part of his computer studies course. He got top marks for it, but as you said it’s costing money to host it and I always use WP
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June 25th, 2014 at 9:04 am
Oh your website /is/ beautiful! And purple… high five!
I know that you can combine your own domain with WordPress.org but I just haven’t been game to lose my place with the search bots. Ah well, maybe one we’ll get the best of both worlds.
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June 22nd, 2014 at 3:58 am
I do hope you’ll keep it safe on a CD or something.
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June 22nd, 2014 at 10:26 pm
Yeah, it’s on my harddrive and backed up on CD. I want to be able to trot it out when I’m 90. “See kiddies, this is what coding was like in the Old Days.”
Mwahahaha!
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June 23rd, 2014 at 7:03 am
Honestly, you can do it right now. I’m not kidding one bit.
Sometimes i’m browsing the Unity answers pages to gather some more smarts for my own game and i’m looking at questions that are really…. dunno. As if people now will only be happy if there is just a big red button in the middle of the screen that magically puts the code for them.
Simple 101 stuff that are documented with examples in the supplied help files that are just 3 simple lines of code.
Some people even end their questions with “write my a code”.
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June 23rd, 2014 at 7:04 am
*me. write me a code. Not my 😛
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June 23rd, 2014 at 7:05 am
I posted as anonymous!! 😐 something is off with my browser today…
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June 23rd, 2014 at 10:38 am
That was you! When I read the bit about Unity I wondered if this was one of your programming buddies. 😀
Sorry the browser is playing up but the comment came through just fine anyway, even if it was anonymous, lol.
I’m old fashioned enough to think that starting at the basics is a good thing, but when you think about it, html and CSS are already very simplified forms of code – e.g. in comparison to Fortran. So maybe it’s not surprising that so many people want the code to be even simpler.
Getting someone else to write your code though…that’s just pathetic. 😦
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June 21st, 2014 at 6:56 pm
Oh, my! After reading this, I think I’ll forgo having a website. I am a computer-idiot.
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June 22nd, 2014 at 10:22 pm
Lilo! Lovely to see you on my blog. 😀 And welcome to the conversation.
I really wonder whether we even need websites any more. I guess the big companies probably do, but the rest of us seem to do just fine with only blogs. 🙂
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June 21st, 2014 at 2:11 am
My son, future code writer extraordinaire, tries to explain what he is learning in his computer science classes. Yeah, it’s way over my head. So, I’m pleased with the easy peasiness of WP. It’s sad to let work go, but sometimes necessary. I’m very happy you blog in my realm.
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June 22nd, 2014 at 10:16 pm
I do feel a bit of nostalgia for Old Purple, but I love the functionality of WP as well. High 5 for bloggers. 😀
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June 21st, 2014 at 12:52 am
Your tech skills always impress me. You may think you’re not an expert, but you’re light years ahead of me! Thank goodness for WordPress.com, for those of us less savvy. 🙂
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June 22nd, 2014 at 10:13 pm
You know I sort of question the value of ordinary website any more. All the interaction and fun is happening on blogs. 🙂
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June 20th, 2014 at 8:52 pm
Imagine being someone like me…. I need help with wordpress (and all the easy-to-do tech stuff). I’m admiring the very idea that you created a custom coded site and kept it going for 10 years. Bravo!
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June 20th, 2014 at 10:39 pm
lol – thank you! I’ll take credit for making a website but it really wasn’t a good one. 😀
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June 20th, 2014 at 7:47 pm
The instructions for most technological things are like that now. They presume everyone knows all sorts of things. After almost a year I still have a terribly hard time doing something basic like answering my samsung phone. Half the time I can’t ‘swipe’ it properly before it stops ringing.
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June 20th, 2014 at 10:38 pm
I thought I was the only one! I’ve had my Samsung for a year and a half now and I still have a love hate relationship with it. And remote controls, I hate them too. 😦
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June 20th, 2014 at 2:48 pm
Your talents have no limit 🙂 I wish I’d know about your lovely purple website, I’d have amused myself clicking on the doors.
How awful to spend 2 days struggling with a process for want of information. Perhaps you can offer to craft a how to for GoDaddy, for a reasonable fee of course…
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June 20th, 2014 at 10:32 pm
-grin- Trust me, if I thought I had a snowflake’s hope in hell of getting that fee I would!
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June 20th, 2014 at 2:32 pm
If you found GoDaddy difficult to navigate just imagine my joy to have WordPress or even Weebly who are not only free sites but who make the navigation a dream for ninnies like me. You can’t beat Free AND Easy.
I hope you get your new site up and running soon with your books well displayed and info on your WIP.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
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June 20th, 2014 at 10:31 pm
Yes, I think I’ve been spoiled by WordPress too. That’s one reason I’m not in any rush to reinstate a website. I’m happy just to have my blog ticking along for now. 🙂
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