As I settle into retirement, I keep learning new wrinkles about how to juggle my existing universe of web sites, blogs and social media. It was all so much simpler when I was employed and could absorb a few bucks here and there to tweak a site.
Over the past few days I have been shutting down my old sandbox site (used primarily to try out things while I was learning HTML, JavaScript and CSS). I wanted to keep my domain name, though, so I worked with my domain name provider and the former hosting company to transfer the pointers so you could read this post.
It turned out to be a Rube Goldberg situation, to say the least. I register the domain (and pay for it every year) to one company, who uses another company to do the actual registration, which points to the name servers of the host provider [where all the actual data that is being shared lives]. The domain name server [DNS] comes into it somehow; which is owned by someone else. Apparently over the years bits and pieces of the puzzle are bought and sold behind the scenes. So, unbeknownst to me, apparently I was doing business indirectly with GoDaddy for some time.
I put myself through all this in order to save some money [because I am now on a retired fixed income]. The catch is: I had to pay to accomplish the switch anyway, even though I am already paying! The internet is a wonderful thing (and some of it is sort of free), but what I learned this week is that there really is no free lunch.
It does feel good to have my internet footprint cleaned up a bit, though, so I’m glad it has all worked out. I wonder what else I can cut instead to pay for the rearrangement?
