Comments on: Why I'm Letting My Server Space Subscription Lapse

By: Do You Really Need a Website?

Do You Really Need a Website? — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:54:30 +0000

[...] me to ask around and find out what the reasoning was to NOT have a website. The blog here talks about an entrepreneur who gives 5 points for why he is canceling his site. Although he [...]

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:04:12 +0000

“Even if you’re only paying between $100 and $200 a year for server space and domain name registration”

Wow – you need to shop around. I pay under $50 year to host my WordPress-based site.

By: Why Professionals Still Need Their Own Web Sites

Why Professionals Still Need Their Own Web Sites — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:01:41 +0000

[...] 16th, 2009 (11:00am) Charles Hamilton No CommentsTweet This Yesterday, Darrell wrote that he is discontinuing his personal web site. Yes, designing and maintaining an attractive and effective web site takes time and money, but even [...]

By: Dan B.

Dan B. — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:51:32 +0000

Darrell, I understand your points about maintenance and freshness and distraction–all three are issues. It seems to me that maintenance and distraction are taken care of mostly by getting a good design and a solid solution for presenting your content and then forcing yourself to stop tweaking (easier said than done for me).

Regarding freshness, it wouldn’t be that hard to regularly update your homepage with links to your latest posts here, right? WordPress and other CMS packages can be made to display rss and Twitter feeds with the simple addition of a plugin.

By: Dan B.

Dan B. — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:44:50 +0000

I like the idea of securing domains for my kids–hadn’t considered that before.

By: Meg Guiseppi

Meg Guiseppi — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:39:32 +0000

Darrell, you may not have considered that, if you let your websites lapse, search engines will still include them in search results for your name for quite some time. People clicking through to those sites will get a dead link, unless you redirect every web page. How do you suppose dead links will impact your brand? That certainly won’t give a good impression of you.

Although it’s a pain and perhaps a distraction to have to keep up with less valuable websites, I think it makes sense to incorporate the time into your regular marketing maintenance to update those sites every few months or so, or hire someone to do it.

If those sites have been around for a while, they have some Google power, and with a little work, could perhaps become more valuable to you.

By: Steven Howe

Steven Howe — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:18:41 +0000

Darrell, you’d think that with all the freelance designers and marketing bloggers that read / subscibe to these posts you wouldn’t be in this situation.

Maybe in a few weeks when I’ve gotten a bit more established as a freelancer I’ll get in touch and see where you’re at. ;)

In the meantime, I would seriously recommend keeping your domains, even it you end up re-directing them to your Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn profiles. You may want them back later and find some ad-site squatting on them (boo, hiss!). If you find them currently too expensive, have a look around for an alternative supplier.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:05:14 +0000

I was in the same position a few months ago. I kept the hosting so I could have a way of controlling the domain name. This hosting also had email and so on.

My new solution is that my domain is hosted via WordPress. My WordPress site is now my new personal home page and the jump point for everything else.

WordPress domain hosting also has pre built support for Google Apps so my mail is now there.

Finally all my photos are with SmugMug.

So overall, I am paying the same sort of money each year as I did before but somebody else does all the hard work at a server level and I can just concentrate on the content. In addition I don’t have the same sorts of space limitations as I had before.

By: Daryl Griffiths

Daryl Griffiths — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:37:40 +0000

Dan (when you’ve finished your course at charm school), who said they’re doing this anyway?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:55:18 +0000

As someone who does web development, it’s next to impossible to not have a website. I’m amazed at the number of people who now consider it perfectly acceptable to put an @gmail.com account on business cards. Kids these days…
I agree with Stephen–I like the control. Even if my design stagnates, it’s mine.

By: Stephen McGehee

Stephen McGehee — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:56:37 +0000

Having my own web site long ago became a necessity and not an option. My customers download software and updates, get tech support docs that would otherwise be tech support phone calls or emails, and it lets me put show a personal side of an otherwise sterile software business. All of my plans are for expanding the role of my web sites and domain names – not eliminating them.

I am a big fan of simplifying and maintaining control wherever possible, and having my own web presence gives me both simplicity and control. One of the biggest benefits of working for myself is the ability to fully control every aspect of the business. Handing that control over to someone else is just one more step toward going back to the corporate environment – something I will not do.

By: Sam Harrelson - Why I’m Keeping My Personal Site

Sam Harrelson - Why I’m Keeping My Personal Site — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:53:50 +0000

[...] via Why I’m Letting My Server Space Subscription Lapse. [...]

By: William

William — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:36:41 +0000

I would never give up my domains, though I did give up running a separate site a long time ago. I use Google Apps for my backend so I get all the Gmail goodness but with my own domain name. I get to use the tool I like but I still get the benefit of having a more professional look to my email address and control over my addresses. For my personal domain I just pointed the homepage to a google sites page that links to some family stuff, pictures and what not. For my personal I site I use tumblr which you can use with your own domain. I almost never populate tumblr directly but it pulls in my Google Reader shared items and twitter updates. The page also has links to facebook and other sites. Its just enough with the auto updates to keep the page fresh and to lead a visitor to the relevant sites.

I think having your own domain is important now and will only get more important as a way of securing your identity online. I’ve purchased the domains for all my kids which they may or may not use in the future but for a few bucks a year at least I know they will have them later on.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:36:24 +0000

Turning control of you online presence over to social networks?
You must be a douche.

By: Simon Mackie

Simon Mackie — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:06:45 +0000

I’m toying with redirecting to my LinkedIn profile — but I know that I won’t do it. I like the idea of having my own site that I can do whatever I like with, even if it is languishing currently.

By: COD

COD — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:53:13 +0000

I can think of one really good reason to maintain your domain – control. LinkedIn may decide to start charging a fee you don’t want to pay or Facebook may never figure out how to make a profitable business out of what they do. Gmail may go down for a week (very unlikely, but it could happen). If you are forwarding all your domain mail to Gmail then one quick change to stop the forwarding gets you back into business with email. I pay $50 a year for my domain site- it’s worth it for the piece of mind alone. If you don’t want to maintain a blog there then a simple portfolio page with your resume and with links to your online locations is useful and not harmful at all.