Discussion - My Self-Hosted Experience

This Week's Topic

My Self-Hosted Experience

I have now been back on Blogger for a month, and I thought with some time and distance, I could reflect on my self-hosting experience. 

The Good

There were quite a few positives to moving my site. I did have a bumpy start when I tried to do it on my own, but once I found a host that gave great support, the transition was not too bad. 

• Migration - My wonderful host took care of this for me, but I did wish I had not been fooled by all those articles I read telling me how easy it would be. Look - I am cheap and will always try to do things myself if it will save me money. I am also sane, and if it becomes too much of a headache, I know when to cut my losses and get some help. 
• The Editor - I actually loved the block editor. The reason being that when I wanted to alter the mark-up, it was so nice and tidy. When I build a post in Blogger in compose mode, the mark-up generated is a mess. I have since created new templates for my Blogger posts, and it's going really well. 
• The Commenting System - I have always liked the way Wordpress' commenting system worked. I liked the ease with which I could approve and reply. In Blogger, I have to approve the comment then go to the post and reply from there. It's a little tedious. I also liked the way I could follow a conversation. I simply got a notification and could reply. If something like this exists in Blogger, I haven't found it. I tried subscribing to the comment, but then I was notified every time a new comment posted and not just replies to my comment. That was annoying. I hated Disqus when I tried it, and I am pretty much put off with installing a commenting system. 
• New Followers - I did pick up some great new followers who have since abandoned me when I moved back. I guess since I don't show up in WP reader, they think I am gone. I sort of knew this would happen.  

The Bad

I know a lot of you are aware of my struggles. They started pretty early after my migration, and I spent so much time trying to fix the issue. It was becoming really unhealthy for me. 

• The Commenting - That Nonce error was the bane of my existence. I am having flashback. *shudder* The thing that bothered me was that I notified my host several times, and when I was leaving, they asked why. I told them, and they were like, "we can help if you like." I did reach out several times in the past and gave up. I know some people who self-host said they did not use Jetpack (which I think was where my issues began), but to me, I wanted the functionality. I wanted people to be able to comment via Wordpress and to subscribe and be able to read my posts in Wordpress reader. 
• The Plugins - I only installed two plugins, Jetpack and UBB. I loved the functionality of UBB, but had no idea I would need to rebuy it each year. It still functioned, but I could not get any updates. I think this may have been part of my issue too. It's something to think about when you use a plugin to build part of the site. For me, I only used it for the reviews, but once that plugin was gone, so was that part of my reviews. That was one reason why I couldn't bring myself to deactivate it. I had two years of reviews. It was overwhelming thinking about redoing them all PLUS the backlog reviews I had slowly updated. 
• Missed Posts - I write all my posts on the weekend and schedule them for publishing. I had so many missed posts when I moved to Wordpress. I tried changing some settings, manually clearing the site cache, but my posts kept failing. I had to start manually pushing them out every day. It wasn't the end of the world, but it was inconvenient, and I never had a missed post in all my years on blogger.  
• The Future - When you stop self-hosting, your site is gone. I don't think I thought that far into the future. It was actually my daughter who was a bit disappointed to think all the stuff she created would be gone. She liked knowing there was a little piece of the internet with her thoughts out there. I kind of agree. My site was too big to migrate to free Wordpress or most of their priced plans. If I stopped blogging, I couldn't see me paying for hosting forever. 

Although my personal experience with self-hosting gave me many headaches, I know a multitude of people who have no issues. Overall, I am happy to be back where I started. I am slowly reposting reviews from earlier this year which I have to reformat. Glad to say, it's almost done, and my faithful blogging friends still come and give me a visit which I appreciate. I am sad that I did lose a lot of posts, but I have had no anxiety generated by the blog these days, and for that, I am grateful. 

Now it's your turn!

Do you have any reservations
about self-hosting?
Let us know in the comments!