Community Matters

I have never hosted any of my personal blogs anywhere else. And every time I talk to people who do I am happy that I was never tempted. There are way too many issues with doing that. Lack of control would be my number one concern. I want to be able to decide which OS I’m running, which version of the web server, which libraries I have available. Which blogging software and which version of it. Etc.

If you host with Blogger or Typepad or even on WordPress.com you are restricted to the versions someone else is willing to give you. You can’t change the underlying blogging tool, can’t install a new library – often can’t even install a plugin.

The other day I started hosting my wife’s blog. That brought it home to me. You want a development blog? Sure, no problem. Let me add another WordPress instance under a different hostname. You need the GD library? No problem, apt-get install php5-gd and that’s taken care of (I decided to run Debian on my servers quite a while ago). There’s a problem with xyz? Let me take a look in the log file. Very powerful. Very liberating.

Yes, some of the hosters like Dreamhost allow you something almost as good. With lots of choices and lots of control. But still, you’re in a jail – it’s just bigger and more flexible. The only way to really control what you are doing is to host the blog yourself. On a VPS or (like this blog) on a dedicated server.