Blogs - The Next Generation
As I've been reading through some of my old blog archives, I was struck with the thought of how much it would suck if one day, Blogger suddenly went under, and all of my stuff was lost. Well, maybe other people wouldn't care about my old stuff, but at least I would be kind of pissed.
So, an idea that has been floating around in my head for a while now is to move my page to an independent server. I'd have to look into how much it costs, but if it's only a couple bucks a month or so to get a fast and reliable host, I think it might be worth considering. And especially if other people who write blogs/xangas wanted to share the server, then it would definitely be worth it.
Some benefits I can think of:
- When Blogspot or Xanga servers are down, our pages would still work. When their servers are slowed, ours should have plenty of bandwidth to be running fine. Basically, it would be nice to not have to depend on their servers so much.
- No banner ads. Unless you want to try to earn a few cents on the side, our pages could be ad-free.
- Easy to back up your archives. Also, I think it's pretty easy to set up Blogger to post to a 3rd party site, so people who use Blogger now (like me) wouldn't have to change a whole lot.
- Easier to host files. You don't have to fool with Imagestation to put up pictures, Comcast to put up music, etc. Everything would hopefully be simple to manage on one server, with everyone given their own directory to organize and stuff.
- More flexibility for expansion. This might be a stretch, but I can kind of envision bigger and better things in the future for the little blogging community we have among us right now. Not just being connected by a "blogring" or something. But for example, maybe we could maintain a page where different people just post up reviews of the latest movie they saw. Maybe dedicate a page that lets people share links to entertaining websites they found, or post funny videos for other people to download. Between the people who read this blog, their friends who have blogs, and their friends' friends, there's a lot of room for growth, and plenty of possible ideas to pursue. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here.
- More flexibility for creativity. Like if people wanted to add flash to their page or something like that, it would probably be more accessible to do it on a less limiting host than Blogspot or Xanga. Maybe someone could try to program a more reliable commenting system than Haloscan, and share it with everyone on the server.
Anyways, a lot of that might be wishful thinking. But I'm just trying to use my noodle here. If we can get a good host for like 5 bucks/month, and 5 of us get in on it, that's like $1 a month, which is pretty cheap. Of course, I'm sure no one wants to pay any money for something they can get for free. So I might have to sabotage Blogspot and Xanga (just kidding). It really depends on how much people think they could realistically gain from among the benefits I listed above.
Oh well, if I get around to looking up more info, it will be posted here on this blog at a later time. Or if anyone already has info to share, feel free to leave a comment too.
