Welcome to my Blog! Here is an introduction to my Blog. This blog will be about my interests, somewhere to upload my notes and to offload my random thoughts. Often when scrolling around the Internet, I come across many different and interesting topics – this is where I will write about them. When I learn new things and when I have a interest in something, I will write about it here.
I was actually going to start blogging using a different domain name. But after I started to use the other domain name, I found out that twitter and other accounts had the name registered already. So to avoid confusion, I am going to use this domain and redirect the other domain here instead.
I decided to use WordPress.com after looking around at many different platforms including, self-hosted WordPress and in different programming languages such as Ruby. After weighting up the pros and cons, WordPress.com seemed the best fit – but that changed!
I found WordPress.com to restricted even with paid add-ons. So I decided to self-host this blog with a few others on a server an use the multi-site feature, WordPress has instead in the end.
This allows me to use whatever themes, plugins and to make any customisations I want. It would have been great if WordPress.com (the hosted version) allows you to add your own themes and plugins – but it does not, at least for now anyway!
So after looking around I was thinking about Linode, they are a great web host and I have used them before there support it the best I have ever seen, you can expect a response in minutes (I am not joking). But I wanted to stay away from hosting my sites in the U.S this time if possible (for my own reasons).
I know, I am still using a ‘.com’ domain name. Although I have registered; .co.uk and .eu – for if there is need to change.
I found a web host in France called, Gandi.net and they offer, hosting and domain name registration services and host some big names such as; The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, Gnome, Debian and many more. So I decided to try them and there service and support seems so far very good.
Another reason I choose them was for there domain registration service, they have a really solid platform and there terms and conditions are very clear and easy to understand. They even offer, for free with each transfer or new domain;
Private domain registration,
Free email hosting and
SSL certificate (for one year).
So I have a few domains with a few different domain registrars and have been looking to consolidate them to one place for a while and after reading the GoDaddy and SOPA discussions, it gave me a push to start transferring my domain names. Although, I only have one domain with GoDaddy the rest was with other domain registrars – anyway.
To give GoDaddy credit where due, they was experiencing high rates of, transfers out of their service at the time. When I transfered my domain out, they was helpful and the service was fast. Although I did have to produce, photo I.D but you can look at that two ways; Producing photo I.D is a pain but at least they do care about security.
So that is pretty much it for the introduction. I was using WordPress.com but now I switched to self hosted WordPress for more flexibility and tried to move away from hosting my sites in the U.S. So if you are looking to do the same, Gandi.net is a good place to go.
I am looking forward to adding much content here over time, so keep checking back to find it. This is a personal blog, my thoughts and opinions, I am no expert and get things wrong but I welcome all comments and discussions – just keep them friendly!