Monday, May 25, 2009

Random Thoughts: Cobweb site

My site is becoming a cobweb site. If you've never heard the term before, I'm not suprised. It was a short lived term to describe a site which is static, eternally under construction, and never updated, possibly for years at a time. It's a shame the phrase never caught on. In my opinion, it's fairly clever. Maybe people are just averse to spiders.

Anyway, I haven't posted in a while. I think it's because All I'm doing right now is the same thing everyone else is doing. I work. I eat. I sleep. I take ocasional bathroom breaks. That's pretty much it. I've been out in the garden a lot. I'm expect to be done with the spring effort by the end of the day today. Do people really want to read about that?

Actually, that is something I have thought about. What do people want to read? Initially, I started posting reviews of movies. I consider myself an expert critic. Also, I have a strong appreciation for good movies and TV. It made perfect sense for me to review movies. The only problem is, who wants to read my movie reviews? At one point, I started reviewing resturaunts too. It only seemed proper because I like to eat too.

Unfortunately, the situation became untennable. I exhausted the cheaper dining options. I really didn't want to see terrible or uninteresting seeming movies just so I would have something to review. Lastly, it took so much time that it felt more like a job then a hobby. Since it didn't pay like a real job, and to the contrary, cost a significant sum, I stopped.

Well, I stopped my reviews after I had my website, domain, etc. So, what could I do with it now? Well, it became very blog-like. In fact, it became so blog-like that I installed Wordpress blogging software on my site to make posting easier. There was still no income, but at least I wasn't using notepad anymore.

Once I lost the primary focus, I started posting all sorts of stuff. I could write about any and everything I wanted. Unfortunately, the second factor came in. Readers. I had none. OK, really, I had less than 10, and probably less than 5. Most of what I wrote was informal, so it really didn't bother me that much. I still had viewers of my site because they came for the pictures of my daughter. Unfortunately, the effort to post a hundred pictures every month is a pain. I have to rotate them, filter them, and then take up all available bandwidth for hours just to get them to the server. After that, I have to load them onto the picure site and post a link to them. All said, I probably was devoting a couple hours a month just to get pictures on the web.

Then, I had a couple server/ISP failures. Despite the fact that my ISP said everything was totally restored, it was broken. Fixing it myself resulted in the loss of the online precense of my "acessory" photos like the car  shows, travel, etc. Sure, I could re-upload, but how long would that take? Thousands of photos would take days of network bandwidth. The final technological blow came when my ISP initiated a forced relocation to another server to "improve" things. I tried it a couple times myself, given the past history I had with them. It didn't work. Eventually, they said they were going to do it if I didn't. I let them. Surprisingly, they did it acceptably.

What does all this mean? Well, like most of my posts... not much. I want people to read what I write. I'm sure it would motivate me to write more. If they're not going to read it, though, I don't want to pay a decent amount of money. That is especially true if I don't post. There are plenty of free blog servers out there. Also, there are also picture servers out there. At this point, all I wouldn't want to move is my e-mail. It would be a pain to figure out all the various things that have my therhodeislandreview.com e-mail addresses. I think I may start a potential move. I'll have to look around and see what's out there for photo storage. After all, I have a new baby on the way. 2.5 years of Laura's life resulted in 4000+ photos. I'm sure the second kid will be less, but maybe not. The other advantage to going the free blog route is that I could break up my diferent sites into themed sites.

Will I do it? I don't know. Probably. Maybe not. I'll post a follow-up here if I do. I just don't think I want to pay for this site anymore. It seems like a waste of financial resources. That's especially true if I don't post. So, enjoy this Memorial Day post. I'm going for a run.