I’ve had my blog since 2007 hosted by the very good ionos.com (1and1.com) folks. No complaints about how they do business and their customer care is pretty good (in my experience). The only “bad” part is that it’s getting expensive. And time consuming since I have to do all the maintenance, updates, and “stuff” involved in running a web site.

So ionos made an offer for less than $30 a year for a wordpress blog site that they do all the maintenance and I get to do the designing and posts to. So $30/yr compared to $70 every 6 months. So I did that (olddocking.us) as a “just in case” thing for now. The only “bad” part of the deal is it only comes with 1 e-mail address. (Which I can live with but SWMBO needs her present e-mail address from my site.)

And, no, $70 every 6 months will not break the bank or put us in the Democrats “free food but we want your vote” line. Still, why not save money (and effort) when and where one can?

So (I use that word a lot when I’m thinking out loud), ionos has this e-mail only plan with a “free” domain (for the 1st year). Price: $1/mo for the first year then $2/mo (billed annually) with the ability to have 10,000 e-mail addresses (of which I’d use maybe 5).

Why maybe 5? One for SWMBO (the address she’s using now) and I always have a spam@ and junkmail@ address to give those sites that demand an e-mail address but I know I’m going to “suddenly” get a ton of spam/junkmail from. After not getting an unacceptable amount of either I’ll log back in and change the e-mail address to one of my “regular” addresses.

So where am I going with this thinking out loud thing? Well, if I kill off stanking.org it’ll kill my self-hosted web site that I’ve had since 2007 (LOTS of posts and media) and pick up the “free” domain stanking.org for the e-mail only site after making our usual e-mail addresses everything should be back to normal (e-mail wise). The only thing we could lose is any e-mail we didn’t download before switching over. If I’m thinking right as long as I re-create the exact e-mail addresses we use now even new incoming mail to the “old” addresses should get to us.

At least, in theory.

It’s a big step. Yeah, my blog is shit and no one but me would miss it if it faded from the face of the Internet. But it’s mine. For 14 years now. It works like I want it to work (mostly) and I’ve learned a lot keeping it up. And it is the only place my oldest daughter knows to find me online and bitch about “those naked ladies on your site.” (Even though I keep “backups” on WordPress and Blogger those sites could be disappeared any moment from “wrongthink.”

And, yeah, I exported all the posts and imported them into the new blog so the essence is there. But there are a butt-ton of broken links (to external sites that no longer exist mostly) and most of the media is missing. Still, it’s starting to look like “my” blog. Post by e-mail makes it easier too. Which I’d also have to re-set up.

Still, blog and e-mail for less than $60/yr -vs- $140/yr now. (Oh, and $2/mo basic e-mail. Forgot that. So add $24 to all that.)

If I could get SWMBO to switch over to her gmail completely it’d make things easier. But we’ve been married 35 years so she’s not out to make things easier. She hates change. Probably why she hasn’t shit-canned me for an upgrade. (Sometimes it’s just easier to suffer.)

You know, there are probably more better things for an almost 70-year old to do. Or, put another way: You know, there are probably more, better, things for an almost 70-year old to do.