Category: The Undefined Remainder

Geeky stuff. Internet, Games, Free Software, Sci-fi etc.

Sterilized Spore

Db08 Comments

In the last two days I’ve been playing Spore which I have, lets say, borrowed from a friend and I must say I quite like it. It’s a pretty addictive game and all pseudo-evolution, make your own monster stuff is cute.

But I’m not going to buy it.

Why? Because the publisher has seriously dropped the ball in regards to what the consumer wants. I was honestly considering bying the game today but then I stumbled onto the reviews of it on Amazon and realised what kind of C.R.A.P. they have in store for me. I will not buy a product who treats me as if I’m a thief already. I will not buy a product which is liable to stop working after I reinstall my machine a few times (and as a techie, this is not that rare). I will not buy a procuct which may stop accepting my activation after a few years. I will not buy a product which uses a copy-protection both known to be disruptive to your machine and taxing on your hardware.

Unless this DRM shit is removed, I am not buying the game. And it seems that most people agree with me on this.

Other than that, there are a few other things that are wrong with the game.

1) Evolution is very misrepresented.

While I understand that the game is mostly meant to be fun, there’s certainly ways you could have made it a bit more realistic. For example, I don’t mind that your creature seems to be growing in real time (especially since in the history view, this is shown as millions of years) but what I didn’t like was that your actions do not affect your evolution at all, other than the generic disposition you have (social vs aggressive, carnivore vs herbivore etc).

However, you actual creature traits have nothing to do with what actions you take. I can start as a carnivore but at any point I can switch to herbivore. I can have 4 spikes and suddenly have 1 big poison gland. I can have 8 limbs and a long body and the next generation can be a little ball with wings.

If nothing more, this seems like the creationist view of evolution where they expect a dog to give birth to a chicken or something similar, as this is exactly how it’s represented in the game. You gather DNA by doing stuff and then you mate and get to redesign your creature. At the this stage, you can pretty much make a totally new thing if you want to.

UPDATE: I think this review adequately explains everything that is wrong with the way evolution is repressented in the game.

2) Some things seem purely cosmetic.

I designed a creature with six legs which was as fast as a creature with one leg. This is because the only thing that matters is what kind of “foot” you have. You can have 10 legs if you want to but it actually hurts you. The only thing that matters is your best type of each limb. Your best hand, your best feet, etc. Multiple eyes don’t make any difference. More than 4 legs or hands are a disadvantage etc.

This is because bonuses don’t stack. You only ever use your best bonus from a specific part. So if you have one set of feet that gives 2 speed, and another that gives 3. Your overall is not 5 but 3. What this means is that there’s no point in getting more than 2 of any item as their bonuses overlap. So some feet give extra speed but less charge, some give jump and some give dance but they all overlap eventually.
There’s also no point in getting the same types of limbs for cosmetic reasons. If I have 3 sets of arms, it is a disadvantage to get all of them as human hands as I will not be getting any extra bonuses.

As a result, your creature ends up as a patchwork of limbs that just give the best bonuses and have no relation to possibly evolve (see part 1 as well).

I don’t really understand why they did this as it would have been very easy to simply allow the stacking of these bonuses. Then there would be a reason to have similar parts. If they also threw in a penalty for switching types (say a penalty from switching from a mouth to a beak) then it would make a bit more sense.

Another thing that bugs me about cosmetic stuff is that all the parts your acquire in the first two stages become irrelevant in the rest. It makes no difference in your abilities if you have 2,3,5 or 6 arms, legs, eyes or whatever. It would be nice if the way each creature was finalized (at the end of stage 2) played some role in the rest of the game.

3) The Creature Stage is too short

By far the creature stage (the 2nd one) is the most interesting as you get to play around with your critter body and limbs and the like. Unfortunately you barely begin to enjoy it when it ends and while you can continue playing in order to gather DNA and the like, there’s no point (unless there is some hidden award in place which I do not know but I imagine there is)

All your body changes (other than speed) become purely cosmetic for subsequent stages of the game.

It would be great if on hard difficulty the DNA rewards were much slower and one had the chance to play around a bit more, get to fight some of the big monsters etc. As it is, I had barely finished migrating one time when I was done and from a previous experience, I knew there was no point in gathering more DNA.

4) Civilization stage is boring

The fourth stage of the game is the Civilization stage which for me was very boring and repetitive. I won’t go much into details in this but basically combat is not really exciting and diplomacy does not exist. It’s best if one just does as much as possible to get past it quickly.

5) It’s not very hard

As an experienced gamer, I found medium difficulty to be very easy and the hard difficulty is barely challenging. If you’re going to make it that easy on hard, at least give us hardcore gamers an “impossible” setting or soemthing so that we can have a bit of fun.

6) No multiplayer

While the game is touted as a massive single-player game, it would be great if they had though of some way to have player interraction. As much fun as it look to be able to trade creatures and buildings with others, the novelty of that will last all of one week. Still, the galactic game seems interesting even though I haven’t managed to play it a lot. However my initial impression is that it might get boring very quickly if it isn’t expanded and the only way this can work is either with user created content or regular updates from the company (like a MMORPG) in the form or new missions, new types of single player experience etc.

Still, for all these things, the game is seriously fun and addictive. I can’t see me playing for too long but I’ve enjoyed it for the last two days. It’s quite fun to make your little critter be as weird as possible and slowly evolve it (realistically) and I’m going to go back and try to make more weird types later on, just for fun.

The creature creator is the best part of the game, as never before have we had so much freedom and fun in creating a new 3D object. What before would take hours of 3D modelling, can now happen in the span of a few minutes.

I truly believe most people will enjoy Spore, even with all its problems but I also believe that it’s not worth bying. Not with horrible DRM restrictions and not with such a low replayability. And if you think I’m being too negative, just check what is going on in the Spore Feedback fora. Perhaps this screenshot will give you some perspective.

Which of the two threads do you think is more popular?
Which of the two threads do you think is more popular?

This is why I like dreamhost

Db06 Comments

About a week ago I noticed a sudden spike in my Private Hosting memory consumption. And when I say a spike, I mean a spike

dreamhost ps

Literally within a day I was through the roof and I had absolutely no idea why. I had attributed my previous increase in consumption to a recent traffic increase but a jump like that was ridiculous.

I was fairly certain that this must be a malfunctioning script running somewhere but a quick ps -e didn’t give me any hints. So I turned to Dreamhost support. I fired a quick ticket and got my first reply within 2 days and unfortunately it wasn’t what I wished for.

Basically, the support told me that they cannot know what I am running on my site and thus cannot really help me. I should figure it out myself. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed.

Thanks for the reply Brian but I’m a bit dissapointed. Your reply was basically “we can’t help you. Figure it out yourself” which is a bit of a letdown compared to what I’m used from Dreamhost support.

The thing is, that in the Dreamhost PS information, you mention that 300Mb should be enough for a top 100 blog. I don’t even have a top 100k blog and I do not run any custom code. I run 3 wordpress blogs and 2 galleries and that’s it.

While I can imagine that some plugin is malfunctioning or possibly a site being hacked and running custom code, I’m not an expert on this stuff and without full access it get pretty impossible for me to figure it out.

I can understand that Dreamhost cannot be expected to troubleshoot everyone’s usage, but on the other hand for someone now really knowledgeable this sounds just wrong. From what my point of view, the “usage”, which I cannot verify in any way independently and does not have any visible basis, could just steadily keep increasing to 2000Mb and I couldn’t do anything about it other than just fork out money.

In any case, I’ll see if I can find anything myself

One more day passed and then I had a much better response. Another support person took over and gave me some tips to try as well as some possible command. ps auxe > serverlog

So I gave it a try and, lo and behold, now 4 misbehaving scripts were revealed. One was an instance of my very own complexlife plugin taking up 15% of the ram, while the other 3 where instances of the photodropper plugin, each taking a 10% . Altogether pretty much explained why my usage was so extreme.

So it was time to bring out my good friend –kill– and get me rid of some unruly processes.


Whoop-de-doop, my memory consumption is back to sane levels. This is why it pays to have some good support at your company. I’m happy once more 😀

Still wary of self-hosting? Then here's my ultimate proposal.

Db0

Right, so here we are, after one full week of me trying to convince you that self-hosting is the superior choice and most probably, you still have the same opinion as before I started.

That’s ok, I didn’t expect 6 simple posts to create a stampede of people falling over each other to take control of their own site. What I did hope to achieve is to dispel some of that wariness so that I don’t have to counter all these arguments in this post.

So here’s my cunning plan:

I’ll do it for you.

What will I do specifically? I will setup your wordpress installation. I will use all my experience in the platform to configure the most useful plugins, your SEO, your backups, your performance and importing your previous blog. I will take your wishes for your blog and attempt to make them come true.
You will not be required to spend any time in setting anything up, other than buying your new hosting plan and putting your new password once I’m finished. Hell, I’ll give you 30 days support while I’m at it.

And I’ll do it for free.

It is at this point that most sensible people would ask: “What’s the catch?”. Well, there’s no catch, but there are…stipulations:

  1. The people eligible for this offer will be personally chosen by me. I will only help people who have proven to hold values at least a bit similar to mine. This means no Ayn Rand Objectivists and no libertarians: These true believers in the free market can go pay for it.
    Initially this offer will be extended by invitation. Depending on how well received it is, I may allow people to request it. I will investigate and veto requests on ethical grounds.
  2. You will have to use Dreamhost and you will have to use me as a referrer. The reasons this are:
    • This is the provider I use and know pretty well by now. I do not know the admin panels of the other hosts and nor do I care to learn them. By using Dreamhost it means that I’ll be able to work very fast.
    • I will receive 10% of whatever you pay as a referral reward. This will be less than 5€ if you go for a yearly plan so don’t assume I’ll be earning a fortune. Furthermore, since by using my promo code dbzer0 you will pay 20$ less, I will not get anything for a while.
    • If you pay by credit card, you can cancel your contract within 90 days. This gives you ample time to abort if you don’t like it anymore and saves me from nagging. It gives you the peace of mind that I will not scam you as soon as you give me access.
    • It is cheap. You can pay from 9$ to 6$ per month, depending on how much you prepay. While this is more expensive than some, it more than makes it up for quality and support.
    • It is scalable. If you find that shared hosting is too slow, and you will only have that if you have too many plugins or too many visitors, you can request private server hosting for an extra 15$ per month which will dramatically improve your speeds. You can then further increase your speeds depending on your needs.
    • It provides overwhelming amounts of space and bandwidth. The initial plan will give you 500Gb of space and 5Tb of Bandwidth which will increase weekly. You will find it practically impossible to use them all, which means you can start hosting stuff for your friends, or special projects (say, online backup of your home PC).
    • You will certainly find naysayers of Dreamhost and I’m certain they have valid points but I’m quite satisfied myself and I believe you will be too.
    • They’ve been recognised as one of the only twenty five companies in the world to have a democratic workplace. I’ll gladly promote and pay a bit more to make sure that their employees are not abused and give an example for other companies. Plus, they are one of the few companies that don’t take themselves too seriously and their newletters and blog are actually worth reading.
  3. You are not required to give me any reward for this. That does not mean I would not appreciate any way you might deem to repay me and I will accept anything you believe my work deserves. This can be a linkback from your new blog, a permanent or prominent place in your blogroll, donations, a good word and generally anything else you might think of.There is only one catch:
    Any kind of reward you provide me for this work will be shown publicly.I will have a special page for this project and I will list all the people and sites I’ve created through it and all the rewards each has provided. Of course, on stuff that it is not easy to figure out if they are a reward or not (like a linkback), I will only require you explicitly mention it somehow.

So these are my only stipulations. I believe they are reasonable but if you disagree, I’m open to discussing it.

How will this work?

Simple. You follow my link and register to the only plan there is (I told you it’s simple). This will automatically set me as your referral so don’t go surfing around before registering. If you want to make sure, use my email dbzero@gmail.com
Alternatively, you can use the promo code “dbzer0” (minus the quotes) to get 20$ off. Alternatively you can not use the code which means that at some point in the future I’ll receive those 20$ extra 😉

Once your account is ready, you give me your new admin code for your dreamhost panel.

I ask you some information like “What domain name do you want” and “This domain name is not available, choose another”.

Once I have all the information I need, I tell you to wait.

At some point in the near future I get back to you and tell you that your new blog is ready and provide you with a new username and password.

We spend the next month telling me what else you would like you blog to do and I try to make it do it.

Once the month is past, I keep supporting you only on a best effort basis as I attempt to help someone else. Hopefully by then, you’re once again to the stage where you’re happy to leave your configuration be and simply post new stuff.

Why do I do this?

I do it because I’m honestly disappointed to see so many good people not doing the smart choice because of time or skill constraints.

I do it because I find it a pity that these people cannot shine as they could, as they are moored in the limited free hosting.

I do it because I want to help fellow Atheists (with correct values) to become better.

I do it because I like attention.

I do it because I have free time and enough skill that won’t hurt me to put to good use. It’s either that or simply read more or watch some series.

I do it because I had a dream.

I do it because I think gathering goodwill is worthwhile.

I do it because I hope it will inspire others.

The first invitations.

So, to get things started, here are my first invites.

I will start on a first come, first serve basis. If more than one of you guys accept, I will do it serially.

If none of these three accept the invitation, I select the next batch of invites. If none of the next batch accepts, I will attempt to select one from the comments (so if you want me to do you, please leave a comment stating so along with who you are, in case I don’t know you already)

If I have no acceptances and no comments to select from, I will consider this experiment a failure and stop asking.

Personally, I’m hoping it does not fail.

As for the rest of you. I hope to hear your opinions on this. Speak up!

The 31 definite reasons why you should be self-hosting WordPress

Db020 Comments

While I was presenting the arguments against the most popular reasons people have for not self-hosting their own blog,  I’ve been proposing WordPress as the software people should be using for that purpose. However I haven’t actually explained what’s so great about WordPress in the first place nor have I specificed the benefits self-hosting provides over free hosting like WordPress.com or Blogger.

Of course one can just look at the features as given by the devs themselves or check what popular blogs on blogging have to say but I thought that since you’re with me until now, you might be interested in my personal take on it.

Disclaimer: Some of these may look obvious or be already available for your free blogging platform of choice but that does not mean they are available for all. As an example: Blogger does not support trackbacks while WordPress.com does not allow ads.

For simple or casual bloggers

1. Having your own domain name means that if you ever change your mind about how popular you want to be, you don’t have to go through the hassle of redirecting your readers to a new location.

2. You have hundreds, if not thousands, of possible themes to choose from. Practically a guarantee that your blog will look fresh and unique to visitors without any effort on your part.

3. The WordPress software is gratis and will always stay that way. As a result the only costs you have, is your web host which generally provides you with much more benefits over simply having a blog.

4. You can have pages that exist outside of your blog timeline. No need to have your “about page” be a normal blogpost you need to link to, or other workarounds like that.

5. You’ve got free stats integrated into your blog. No need to go through the hassle of opening, verifying and installing google analytics or any other third party software.

6. It takes just 38 minutes to set up, including registering with a new host.

7. Installing new themes of plugins is as simple as it gets. A one click process.

8. Autosaves and revisioning so that your sanity and nerves are spared from both PC crashes and wrong saves.

9. With the widgets setup, you can easily change the layout of your sidebars or add custom and obscure scripts with two clicks, without editing any files.

10. You don’t have to be technical. You don’t have to know anything about dns, ips, mysql or apache to install and maintain it on most popular hosts

For the Technical and Web2.0 oriented bloggers:

11. You can have your OpenID being your own domain name and know you won’t have to change it in the future.

12. You can customize your theme as much or as little as you want and this is made much easier by the modular design of wordpress themes.

13. Where in other platforms you can only use whatever plugins or gadgets they provide or allow, in wordpress you have a choice of hundreds of plugins for almost any purpose your might think off.

14. You also have a choice of Categories and Tags. None of that googly “labels” that no-one else uses. Having both categories and tags allows better categorization and tag clouds 😉

15. With so much anti-spam you can pretty much say goodbye to everyone’s favourite canned meat. And that is without annoying your commenters with captchas and the like.

16. A comment system that is not a pain in the ass and actually recognises blockquotes.

17. Pretty much all services related to blogging support wordpress first and best. Even if that service has not, for some reason, implemented any way to integrate with blogs or wordpress, sooner or later,  someone will make a plugin for it.

18. Supports Google Gears and offline/faster use.

19. The amount of information about wordpress out there is staggering. If you want to play with the system or simply optimize it as much as possible, you easily can.

For popular or Pro-Bloggers (and wannabes)

20. You have your own domain name which allows you more authority and visibility. Not having this, especially when you have big plans for your blog, is a big mistake.

21. You can use adverts if you wish.

22. Has great SEO out of the box that you can make it even better with plugins. If you’re going to write articles and don’t have many people to link to you, you’ll need this to be discovered.

23. With any number of plugins you get the option to show similar posts which is great for making  scrappers work for you and keeping visitors engaged.

24. You have trackbacks. ‘Nuff said.

Other great capabilities and options

25. You have a great built-in media library which gives you not only the ability upload your own files but to also easily find them in your server, with the same settings you used them before if you wish to.

26. Supports the iPhone for the fanbois.

27. You setup collaborative weblog without having to make people register with a specific provider. You can even avoid registering altogether by using OpenIDs once more. Hell, you can set it up as a little social club if you want to 😉

28. Being Open Source, you have the certain knowledge that you platform will never go stale or out of development. Indeed, the more people that use it, the faster and better it becomes.
It is already on the bleeding edge of blogging and it shows no signs of slowing down.

29. It is easy to integrate with other software that you might use like gallery or forum software.

30. Being on your own host means that you can now easily help your friends escape the limited free hosting by taking them on your own server, with little cost to yourself.

And finally

31. As Free Software, wordpress is the most ethical choice of platform. By using it and showing your support, you not only retain your freedoms but also support people who might not otherwise have an online voice (say due to costs). It also means that most of the plugins and tools created for it are also probably free software which allows you or anyone else to take and customize them for your own use or join to make them better.

It means that, even just a bit, you promote a culture of shared reciprocation and freedom.

What other reasons can you think on why one should self-host and use Wordress?

Self-hosting addendum: Host Selection

Db0

In the last two posts I’ve been explaining how and why the WordPress installation and maintenance neither difficult not time consuming. I’ve made some claims about how quick it is to register or use a one-click installation but I deliberately have not mentioned which hosts can do this. This is because I did not want to appear as simply advertising for them.

However after some discussion with another acquaintance from Greece as well as from the comments, I was led to realise that, while some of what I say may sound as obvious to anyone who is already self-hosting, people who have no knowledge of the subject can understandably be miffed or confused. As the Barefoot Bum adequately put it:

This seems like useful information, but it’s not. What’s a “shared hosting provider”? Already you’ve asked me to Google. Assuming I figure out what that means, which are competent? Which are honest? I have to check ratings, recommendations, referrals.

Then, *most* shared hosting providers? Not all? Then I have to check. Is it obvious on their website? Do they say “WordPress” on the front page? Are there any limitations? Version requirements? Extra costs? And again: Are they honest? Do they *really* support WordPress, or will it crash when I install it because they’re using some funky tweak of PHP or MySQL?

I think this is a pretty fair statement to make and truth be told, I am planning to tackle the selection of the hosting provider in my final post in depth. however for now, in case anyone is already convinced and itching to start with shared hosting but can’t decide with whom to go I’ll give you a few choices in short.

Personal suggestion: Dreamhost. This is the one I’m using at the moment, and everything I’ve said until now definitely applies to it. If you want to know why I suggest it, you’ll have to wait until the final post of this series. If you do decide to use this, you can also use the promo code dbzer0 to get 20% off.

Alternative suggestions: Check what is certainly supporting wordpress from the official site. Unlike Dreamhost, I can’t promise anything about these as I do not know them personally. However It’s quite certain that they will support most of what I mentioned.

You want to self-host your blog but don't have time? Can you spare 38 minutes?

Db08 Comments

The Passage of TimeWhat I have heard from most people who have been blogging for a while is that they would really like to self-host their own site but they never got around of doing it because of time constraints. And every time I hear this excuse I can’t help but wonder where they got that impression.

The Passage of Time
CC - Credit: ToniVC

What I have heard from many people who have been blogging for a while, is that they would really like to self-host their own site but they never got around of doing it because of time constraints. And every time I hear this excuse I can’t help but wonder where they got that impression.

Now I can understand that one might also have the false idea that setting up WordPress is something technical and thus would take time to figure out, but I’ve also heard this reasoning from experienced computer people.

The only thing I can put this down is a simple ignorance on how easy and quick most good web hosts make it to setup your site, both in WordPress and in most other known systems. Not only are the installations a one-click procedure but the whole thing will be wholly automated so that you can simply ignore it until its ready.

Do you know what would probably take the most time? Getting your credit card out and typing the numbers in the purchase order for your hosting plan.

Here, let me break it down for you:

  • Register a new hosting plan: 10 minutes and maybe 1-5 more until it’s activated
  • Register your new domain name: 3 minutes
  • Install your new WordPress site: 10 minutes (and about 10 minutes of waiting)
  • Configure your new WordPress site: 5 minutes to infinity (depending on how much you want to play around)
  • Import from your blogger or WordPress account: Lets say another: 10-20 minutes depending on the volume, all automated of course.

Honestly, I’m just looking back at the notification emails of when I first started. I made the purchase at 4:56 and my website was up and running at 5:15! I kid you not. And back then I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

It took me more time to find a theme and install some plugins of course but that’s the great part. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to but you can if you do. And given how ridiculously easy it is to try, change and install addons now, compared to when I started, the whole procedure should not take you more than an extra 30 minutes to 1 hour if you want to take your time.

And from then on, you’re simply opening your “write new post” bookmark or even better, just pressing a button on your keyboard.

Another thing that you may not realise about a wordpress installation is that you’re activelly saving time as you use it.

  • Managing: Whether it is looking at your stats, checking your comments or modifying your categories, WordPress has it as easy as possible.
  • Writing: I would argue that even writing a post can be quicker with all the extra options that wordpress provides for media or special formatting. nevertheless, for one who simply writes text, there won’t be much of a difference. Nothing can beat the ability to grab a CC image from flickr for your post in three clicks however 😉
  • Designing: If you’ve ever had to edit your blogger template and look for the start of the body and the end of the head or whatever, you’ll love the wordpress way of using different files for each part. Customizing your theme has never been easier.

These may not seem like much but altogether and in small amounts, they start to build up. There’s a thousand little ways were you can become more productive with wordpress and if that’s not enough, there’s plugins to make it even quicker.

So if time is your constraint, don’t even think about it. What are 38 measly minutes?

Why setting up your own self-hosted wordpress blog is not hard.

Db0

De vieilles entraillesThe third most popular reason people seem to have for not self-hosting their own blog seems to be a misguided understanding of the technical skills and expertise such an undertaking would require.

I’ve heard various takes on this, Some seemed to believe that they would have to code their own site while others assumed that setting up a home server would be necessary. These are, of course, more extreme opinions so I will assume that most people know that setting up your own wordpress installation involves none of that if you don’t want it to.

De vieilles entrailles
CC - credit: Sunfox

The third most popular reason people seem to have for not self-hosting their own blog seems to be a misguided understanding of the technical skills and expertise such an undertaking would require.

I’ve heard various takes on this, Some seemed to believe that they would have to code their own site while others assumed that setting up a home server would be necessary. These are, of course, more extreme opinions so I will assume that most people know that setting up your own wordpress installation involves none of that if you don’t want it to.

The honest to Gould truth is that setting up your own wordpress powered site is usually a breeze.

Do you have the impression that self-hosting includes you ftp-connecting, php-editing, apache-configuring and whatnot? If so let me get this out there first. Self-hosting yout blog can be about as easy as setting up a new blogger account or as difficult as any DYI project. It’s all depending on what you wish to do.

Most shared hosting providers not only provide an already setup environment for installing wordpress but they make installing and upgrading the whole wordpress installation as simple as possible. Literaly an one-step process. You can have a new wordpress installation with as much as putting a new password and pressing OK twice.

Once you’ve set up a basic wordpress installation, just with the very default settings you’re good to go. All you need to do is find a theme (and even that’s optional), and if you’re with a good host you’ll have a few waiting for you and you’re ready. No need to tweak any css or php files.

Some of you might think at this point: “But what about new themes and plugins, don’t they need ftp thingamajibs and whatnot?”

Not any more they don’t. Plugin or Theme installations has in recent times become a ridiculously easy procedure. You’ll be hard pressed to find any instances where as part of improving your site you’ll have to get your hands dirty.

Upgrades? One Click. Backup? One Click. SEO? One Click.

So tell me, does hosting your own blog still sound too technical?

The costs of self-hosting your blog

Db01 Comment

the curl of datasmokeWhat many people seem to be wary of hosting their own blog or site is that it is somehow going to cost and arm and a leg, or at least a heavy enough sum that it’s just not worth doing. Add to that the misconception that self-hosting is only something that pro-bloggers are doing and you can understand why most people stay with free and limited hosts.

the curl of datasmoke
CC - photo credit: zen

What many people seem to be wary of hosting their own blog or site is that it is somehow going to cost and arm and a leg, or at least a heavy enough sum that it’s just not worth doing. Add to that the misconception that self-hosting is only something that pro-bloggers are doing and you can understand why most people stay with free and limited hosts.

Let me get this out of the way first. Self-hosting is not expensive, not unless you consider 1-10$ a month an expensive amount to spent on a hobby, and lets face it, if you’re not a pro-blogger, it is a hobby for you. It is a  way to reach out to other minds out there and make your voice heard. Possibly have some fun with memes, and hopefully affect the world in some way.

At the most expensive plan, self-costing would probably cost you as much as a night out to the movies per month but in return, instead of a 2 hour (hopefully not-lame) entertainment you not only get to own your data but you get much more freedom in what you can do with your site, more visibility and authority due to your own domain, more security (as someone whom you pay, you can keep accountable for problems as well) and a wealth of other goodies that come along for the same price.

What’s the downside? One less crappy holywood movie per month. It’s about time you found out what the better choice™ is anyway.

I honestly don’t know why so many people have this impression that hosting costs are high. With the profileration of shared hosting, costs have dropped to almost nothing. Web hosts practically fall over each other to be cheaper than each other and the final beneficiary is you.
I don’t know, maybe you’re stuck in the 90s where you were paying by the megabyte and assume that for a normal blog you’ll rack hundreds of euros/dollars of cost per month. If so, rest assured that unless you can fill up a few terrabytes of traffic or hundreds of gigabytes of space, you probably won’t end up paying anything more than the basic costs.

Now, to be fair, there is a chance that a basic hosting will not be enough. I do not currently pay the basic 8$ per month costs I started with. I pay 30$. You know why? Because I am hosting at the moment 4 individuals blogs and 2 galleries. My cost have nothing to do with bandwidth or space and everything to do with script heavy sites (of my own choice) and a recent influx of visitors. Were I to simplify my sites and reduce the 35 of so plugins per site I’m using, my speeds and costs would improve considerably.
That said, someone might require a faster, stronger plan to have a quick and usable site if he gets more that 500 visitors per day but at this point, a few ads could easily not only retrieve the costs but bring you money as well. Something you wouldn’t be able to do in some free hosts for example.

At this point you may be wondering why more people are not self-hosting if it’s not that cheap. Frankly, I’m wondering the same myself. Hopefully by the end of this post I will have dispelled at least the misconception of cost. Stay tuned for more of the same in the later posts of this series.

If you still have concerns on the issue of cost, let me know in the comments and we can discuss if you have a point.

Stumbleupon guide for Atheists and Agnostics

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The Atheist Revolution has a great guide for using stumbleupon as a blogger. I was actually planning to write such a guide as an extension of my posts on reddit but he pretty much covered all the bases.

The only thing I want to add is that it’s also useful to stumble through your friends favorites and vote up the good ones. I also reiterate the advise that you don’t stumble onto your own blog if you can help it, or else they’l start punshing this.

Btw, does anyone else think that simply stumbling on a post of your blog, after someone else has reviewed it first does not help? I had the impression that each further vote brings more visitors, but every time I voted up one of my pages that was already stumbled, I didn’t see much of a difference. The number of visitors certainly has something to do with the number of votes however as one of my most popular posts got 1000 visitors in one day simply because it was voted up many times.

Perhaps this only counts if someone votes up after stumbling onto it randomly, instead of doing it deliberately. And this is where stubling on your friend’s favorites can be useful 😉

You can find my profile here.