SuperSatellite ||

So I am nearing a crossroads I believe.  I want to toss some stuff out, and have you all hit it back at me.  This is all about getting feedback from you, because that will ultimately shape the decision I make.

I’ve been using MySpace for what is quickly approaching a year.  It’s been an okay time.  But I’m becoming a little restless with its blogging feature.  Mostly I just get paranoid.  What happens if they crash?  If they start charging?  If some unforeseen nuclear disaster takes out my blog?  I am pretty protective of my writing, so far to the point that I have actually begun printing off hard copies “just in case.”  Plus, who hasn’t gotten fed up with the constant down times, errors, and server problems MySpace experiences?  The big draw of MySpace to me is the blogging, which I rather enjoy, and now that I am far more comfortable with it, and my readership has grown, I feel like I owe it to you and myself to produce the best product I can.

So, in answer to this problem I am considering hosting my own blog, with my own domain and all.  It would allow me to also combine some other stuff I have scattered around, like my photo gallery.  I have been trying to weigh pros and cons, look at alternatives, etc etc.  A big concern though is whether or not you, my steady readers, would follow me.  If I went off-site, would I still be able to maintain (and possibly increase) my readership.  Odds are I would step the quality of my writing up to try and offset things, but naturally MySpace provides a very nice connection to you all.  And since they lack support for subscribing to RSS feeds, you couldn’t just point to my feed to keep up to date (I think LiveJournal and Xanga does though, can anyone confirm that?) if I moved.

The other alternative is to move to a truly hosted solution, like Blogger or Wordpress.  They host it, sorta like MySpace, but since they specialize in blogging, it’s more powerful, reliable, and feature rich.  But it doesn’t leave the data in my hands, and I like the idea of knowing that if something happened to my stuff, if would be my fault, rather than theirs.  On the other hand, I’m linked right to their community, similar to here.

Naturally I would keep my MySpace page, and probably mirror the blog content for at least a short transition phase, all the while trying to drive traffic to the new place.  It comes down to the three S’s:  selfhost, stay, or switch?  It’s a damn hard question to answer really.  I am inclined to start doing things myself.  I installed WordPress on my server at home to play with, that will probably shape my choice too depending on how much I like it.  I hate tossing around buzz words like Web 2.0, but I guess that’s what I’m reaching for.

So let me know what you think, it’s important to me!