New beginnings

This is my first post here on Blogger and it’s been quite a journey to get to this point. Over the years I have hosted my own website on my own server. It went through a few iterations of purpose, starting as a social hub, later becoming a companion site to my YouTube channel then becoming a site for tech news and reviews with a hint of gaming thrown in. Truthfully the gaming side took over a bit more as my interests have changed over the years, but it still largely had its purpose. 

Then of course there are the changes to the visual appearance, going through three different content management systems and multiple visual styles to boot. However in recent years I simply hadn’t updated any of the content, partly due to time and partly because I just lacked the motivation. The site just didn’t reflect who I am or what I was interested in.  

So then, why the new home? It simply came down to the fact that I had no desire to keep paying for a web server. After all I was hardly using the site so paying for a server to host it just didn’t seem necessary. After 18 years I decided it was time to pull the plug and so I did. My former site, now confined to the history bin and the web archive saw its last day on August 21st 2024. 

You might be wondering why I writing on Blogger then. I did recently decide that I wanted to just be able to write down my thoughts on things. Maybe on tech, maybe gaming, maybe other things going on in the world. I didn’t want to be restricted to one particular subject area or style. A specific site could pigeon hole me, but more than that, it was just overkill for what I wanted to do at this point in time. I looked at other blogging hosts, namely Wordpress as I’m very familiar with it as a CMS, but many of the features are behind paywalls and I simply don’t know how much I will be using it at this point. Also I may yet launch a new site with a specific purpose in the future, but not right now. I just want to blog. After some research it really felt like Blogger was a perfect fit for me, it’s free, doesn’t hold features behind a paywall and most importantly lets me enjoy my creative freedom in written form without having to manage a server. On the flip side, it does have some limitations - themes for one thing, but nothing that is a deal breaker. 

So here we are, my new home for writing my thoughts. I hope you will join me for the ride. 

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