A-Z #Gratitude: #Thanks for #WordPress and the #WayBackMachine.

Day 23 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge and the letter W

Thanks for WordPress and the WayBack Machine.

WordPress.com hosts this blog, and many more! 64,681,942 at the time of writing! But WordPress is much more than wordpress.com and its blogging platform.  It’s also a popular Content Management System (CMS).  So popular, lots of web developers set-up business working exclusively with WordPress.

I first used WordPress in 2004 to build my first website: alisonboston.com.   WP was just a year old then. Rather than use wordpress.com, I got a domain, paid for space on a server, installed wordpress, downloaded a theme and made myself a website – with no help from anybody other than wordpress.org forums and help pages.

I didn’t know much about the web and hosting companies, and unfortunately,  the domain I owned got shuffled when the server was sold.   My annual payment was made just before the sale, and the server’s new owners deleted my site for non-payment of account – before the account even went into arrears (in my books, but not in theirs!!).

My website was gone, gone, gone! Or so I thought….   More documentation than anything else, when I started singing in jam sessions, I’d get the name, instrument, and nationality of every musician who played with me, and post it on my website.   When I lost the site, I thought that documentation was gone forever.  (No – I was not backing up the site!  Tut Tut Tut!)

Then, in 2010, when I started alisonamazed on wordpress.com, I  read about the Internet Archives and the Wayback machine, so went and had a look, and there it was: the original alisonboston.com –  and the singing page!

It may seem inconsequential – it’s not as if I’m a famous singer or artist who the whole world wants to know all about – but every one of those musicians is special.  I want to remember them.  That singing page does that.

So thank you WordPress and the WayBack Machine.  WordPress.org and C panel made my introduction to web design easy enough that I was able to set things up by myself.  Then years later, when I thought it was all lost (I’ll be way smarter next time!), there it is, on the WayBack machine.

Another great thing about wordpress.com – I don’t ever have to worry about losing my blog in the shuffle of user accounts in the sale of a server!  Yet, if I want to move my blog to another server, or go pro, I can.  And WordPress.com has everything set up to make that easy peasy!

Isn’t digital technology utterly amazing?   Next thing you know, we’ll be popping out babies with chips embedded in their brains.  (…been watching Dr Who again – there’s that episode where a girl is trapped in a library and people keep getting their brains plugged into the library computer system – or something like that…)

What’s your experience with blogging and the digital age?  Do you use WordPress?  Have you ever visited the WayBack machine?

By the way, I’ve just finished a web design course and this is the result: hardhack.ca

There’s a wordpress site in there too: ESL

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• The Internet Archive (eogn.com)
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• WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.24 (wplift.com)
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