scattered across a tangled web

[orangerful]

I let my GoDaddy account expire today. Honestly, I wanted to swtich web services as soon as that terrible Super Bowl commercials aired by since I had already paid them, I just turned off auto-renew instead. After tomorrow orangerful.com will be no more.

I'm trying to decide if I care. I really liked having my own website, even if I hardly every did anything with it. It started out as a place to store and organize all of the livejournal icons I was making on a regular basis back at the height of LJ's popularity. I've toyed with the idea of making it into an online resume or a personal hub of all my social networks but I can't decide if anyone would care besides me...and maybe my mom LOL.

duncatra posted on her Wordpress blog about the end of Google Reader which lead to a discussion about using Livejournal as an RSS reader. Livejournal used to be my ONLY site. If it wasn't on here, if it didn't have an RSS feed I could have sent to my friends page, I didn't see it.

Then all the mainstream social sites started to take over. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr...being a social media addict, I had to try them all and now I check them daily. Unliked Livejournal, they require a lot less of me. You read a sentence, look at a picture, click "Like" and move on. Honestly, I want more interaction, I want conversations and I can't seem to get those on these sites (I've pondered creating a more "bloggy" tumblr but I don't find it as readable). I started up THREE Wordpress blogs in an attempt to keep myself motivated to write and I get some "Likes" over there and occasional comments but nothing substantial.

I guess I keep thinking that having a website helps me bring all these things to one place, even if the only person that goes to that one place is me (and, like I said, maybe my mom). Plus, it's just cool to have your own domain...isn't it? Is that cool anymore? LOL.

Right now I'm looking at 1&1, Wix, and Squarespace. I think 1&1 is the least expensive...though maybe I should see if I do anything with the free part first before I upgrade with an official domain.

Do you guys have your own websites? Do you feel as scattered as me?

Comments

[elisi]

Do you guys have your own websites? Do you feel as scattered as me?
You just reminded me that I used to. I mean, it was set up by a friend on her domain, but it had my fic on it... Well, what I had written back then. Must have been 2005? Haven't thought about it - or remembered it, even - in YEARS. I wonder if it's still there...

*goes off to see if I can find it*

ETA: Darn, she has actually purged her LJ. (Thought it'd been forever since I'd seen her.) No idea what the site used to be called, and it *must* be dead.

But thanks for the trip down memory lane. :)

ETA2: Thanks to gmail (♥) I found it! Although it is very dead. But it was: http://www.147days.com

Full of pretty Buffy things. *sigh*

[plumerri.livejournal.com]

I totally get you. Back in the days (wow) I had hosting under others (subdomain), my own Dreamhost, etc etc but now it just seems that there are free and good alternatives to the good ol' FTP/HTML and I'm still undecided on whether I want to return to owning a proper domain and setting up Wordpress/Coppermine and all that stuff when there are sites like Squarespace. I liked Squarespace before they went into the premium mode, but right now my main blog is on Wordpress and I'm happy with it. Eventually if I do decide to get a domain, I'll most probably move to Squarespace.