Well, I did it! At 10:46PM on September 30, 2005 I finally took the plunge and registered my very own domain name and signed a hosting contract with DreamHost. I’d always thought of doing it but never felt that I had the time, energy or money to maintain a site of my own.
My first attempt at blogging on Blogger’s free service didn’t work out. I had chosen to write about web development, but for whatever reason I couldn’t get the ball rolling. Instead I found myself writing posts that amounted to little more than complaints about other people’s work.
Recently however I took up the gauntlet again to see if, with a little effort, I could write some quality content. This time however I loosened my previous scope restriction to allow creativity to flow more freely. The blog’s name was “passable.” You can tell by the name that I really didn’t want to place high expectations on myself. The formula worked. With a broader scope and lower expectations, I was able to at least write regularly. Then the itch to write about web development came back. This time however, I had the ball rolling. So I set up “the simple web,” still with Blogger because it was free. It’s easier to try something out when you don’t have money invested in the venture. If it doesn’t work out, you can walk away having only lost the time you put into it.
After an enthusiastic start I slowly came to realize that Blogger wouldn’t let me do a lot of what I wanted to do. It has limitations on what you can do with images as well as its inability to handle external files (like linked .js and .css files). So finally, driven to keep up my online presence and to do it without the limitations of Blogger, arapehlivanian.com was born.
Now all I’ve got to do is tweak WordPress and put together a decent design.
Update: All posts appearing prior to this one were originally posted on either passable or the simple web★
Congrats on your new digs, Ara! It takes guts to get up and leave an established blog, especially when you’re starting to get some links (last I checked, you had 7 in Technorati) and you have to learn blogging software with all the tons of spare time you have lying around.
Well, I better go update my blog roll so that I’m pointing to the right place!
Congrats Ara on taking the plunge!
I know when you kick yourself in the but great things come out of you…so no pressure…I will just expect this site to become amazing, especially in its cleanliness and simplicity – you hallmarks!
Keep up the good job – you’ll get a wider audience, I am sure of that! And that will further fuel your desire to invest yourself more in this.