Tara Hunt

July 9th, 2010

Hosting my own website is a pain in

the ass. Kind of like owning my own house but without the obvious benefits.

When I owned my own house and my

hot water heater died, I had to get it replaced. Broken things added up over

time, but I always thought to myself, "That's okay. It's an investment in my own

property." So the time and money spent on it felt like an investment in my

future.

Now, I understand that hosting my

own blog has similar benefits. I'm hosting my own data and have complete freedom

with it and that is very future focused of me. But I understand the importance

of data in the future and not everyone does.

This conversation is going on right

now over on the Project VRM Mailing list. I'm explaining why the fact that blog

maintenance being a pain in the ass outweighs most people's perceived benefits

to hosting one's own data. That Facebook or Google owning our data doesn't seem

pressing compared to the type of work we'd have to put into the maintenance of

it ourselves. Plus, there is that convenient way that they connect so many of us

by making it so easy.

I self-host my blog. I get to

personalize the theme and have the ability to export my data in an instant.

Nobody puts ads on here except for me. You sign up for alerts? I maintain that

database. It's my content, my community and my artwork. All mine. But it's also

a huge time suck. I get bugs, hacked, lose things, have the possibility of

having my host explode and lose everything not backed up. When my template

breaks with an update, I have to figure out why. I recently lost my Whuffie

Factor website altogether (content is still on my server), and it'll take me a

while to track down this issue. My blog was compromised again for, like, the 6th

or 7th time in 10 months just this week. I needed to research what was going on

and how to fix it, then figure out where things were at, what my passwords were

(I always seem to be changing them) and wade through folders looking for files

that look out of place (I have no clue, really). Luckily I have stellar friends

that helped me out.

It's frustrating and inconvenient.

And even for me, a big believer in owning my own data, I wonder on days like

these if it's worth it. I want to "set and forget". I'll deal with the data

issue later so I don't have to deal with the maintenance issues now. So I posted

this dilemma to the list and got back a bunch of responses with all sorts of

links on how I can make my blog more secure. It's not that security isn't

important. It's very important. I get that. But I don't want to deal with it. I

don't want answers. I want convenience.

And I really think that is the

basis for "regular people" not fighting against Facebook or any other companies

that own a good amount of our data (still growing at an incredible rate even if

there are protests in the geek ranks). They make everything really convenient.

People don't want to learn more about security so they can host their own

conversations and relationships, but if you provided people with a solution that

is 100% user-friendly PLUS you gave people the ability to export/move

data/relationships/etc, you would be a clear choice.

People aren't lazy or stupid, but

we ARE busy and will find anything to simplify our lives so we have more times

for the things that really matter (i.e. not reading how to make our blogs more

secure). It's not about education, it's about understanding that. So if you are

in the business of changing the world or offering a solution for people that is

empowering or a 'better alternative', don't educate people on the benefits of

using your service. Instead, offer the very very best user experience in the

universe. Help people not think about the stuff that doesn't matter and do all

of the heavy lifting in the background so that they can just reap the benefits

of your platform. If you can deliver both freedom AND convenience, you'll be the

clear winner.

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