If Dogs Run Free, Then Why Not We?

Detail of ancient mural on temple wall in Nan, Thailand

I guess I should learn how to run my own server.

I'm a geek to some extent: ham radio since 1960, including making good contact with Japan using less than one-half watt (wireless radio, no Internet wires), fairly good at Morse Code, rather expert in the arcane subject of US tax law, built my first website entirely by hand using html tags in a text editor, and so on.

I use Fargo all the time as an outline editor and have published blog posts using it. But I've also used Blogger, Posterous, Posthaven, Postach.io, as well as the silos: Facebook, Twitter and Google +. I've read about the IndieWeb Movement and agreed with Dan Gillmor's proclamation to break free from the Big Three, posted on the latest popular silo, of course!

I'm always looking for a simple way to break free from the silos. My latest had been Postach.io which is based on Evernote, which I started using so early in its development that my Evernote user name consists of only two characters! Postach.io was pretty easy to use, but when I used it, it seemed to be plagued by server problems. I would publish a posting and it wouldn't appear on my website; sometimes for minutes, sometimes for days. I would send messages to their support folks and eventually (sometimes minutes later, sometimes days later) get back a "Sorry about that" message. They were always polite and easy to like, so I would bear with it. Then on Thursday, 5 March 2015, my entire blog disappeared, giving only a "Heroku | no such app" error message. I looked for a support forum to see whether others were having the same problem. Had they run out of money and ceased operation? I could find no support forum. Then I found there was activity on their Twitter account, which had mostly been inactive before. Suddenly it was very active as LOTS of users were reporting their sites had gone down. So I tweeted them, as the others were doing. The next day I got back a "Fixed now sorry bout that" message and sure enough, my site was working again.

But wait, there is more! That day I also got an email from them, telling me about how the free tier of websites on Postach.io will be disappearing in fourteen days. Apparently my site went down while they were re-configuring things to be able to convert my site from a free site to a $9 per month site, but for my early support, I get a 50% discount coupon. I'm already paying Posthaven $5 per month to continue to host my Posterous postings, after it got sold off and then closed down. Do I want to go down that road again?

Probably not. I can put all my Postach.io postings up on the Posthaven server for no extra charge. And thinking back, I NEVER had a posting not appear there and the entire site NEVER went down even once. But I will have to move everything, quite a bother, especially on such short notice. Another user has come to similar conclusions. Two weeks notice is, frankly, pretty ridiculous. When Posterous got sold, we had two and a half months to move our postings (Feb 15 to Apr 30 of 2013), five times the length of time Postach.io is giving. My Dylan bibliography is hosted by DreamHost. Every time they make a server change that will effect my website, they send me an email well (one week or more) in advance. I've never had them shut down my site unannounced, so they can make changes.

Postach.io seems to be run by really nice guys, but I have experienced problems with my blog that seem unprofessional to me, even for a free tier website. Would it be any better if I paid them money, like DreamHost and Posthaven. I really can't be sure. And two weeks (now nine days) to decide just seems impossibly fast.

I guess I should learn how to run my own server.

But am I really THAT much of a geek??? Do I dare?? Well not in the middle of tax season, that's for sure!