DIY

Monday Mar 6th 2006

I read an interesting post by Wil concerning his impeding decision whether to use TypePad or have a traditional hosted MovableType (as in “you install it, you configure it, you run it”) setup.

I make it well known that I don’t like anything that requires anything “external” to function on a web site because you always run the risk of losing it.

I’ll clarify with an example of a popular blogging service: For all you LiveJournal bloggers out there, what would you do if LJ went down tomorrow? What if you went to the LJ web site and they said they would no longer be offering service with apologies to anyone who actually paid for it (of which there are quite a few)? That would suck, wouldn’t it?

There is absolutely no guarantee in the world that any existing service provided by anyone on the internet (whether free or fee-based) will stay there. Of course, the companies and organizations that offer these services pledge to stay online as long as they can, but that’s a worthless promise. No one can predict the future, so why run the risk?

I personally believe it is totally worth the time and effort to program your own web site rather than subscribe to another service to do it for you. It is better overall to accept the responsibility and just hash it out as best you can, for better or worse. In that fashion you have control over everything rather than be at the whim of someone else (who offers no real guarantee that they will be there tomorrow).

When you program your own web site, you know proof positive that it will be there the next day, and the day after that and so on. It doesn’t matter how you program your web pages or what publishing software you use. Your site will be there.

That’s what counts.

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