I have already confessed my ignorance of simple and somewhat obvious uses of technology. Many I’ve had to learn from younger people. Today I share one huge example of technological ignorance.

Eliminating Technology Ignorance

I have years of experience with building and maintaining web sites. Despite that, I was completely unaware of some basic fundamentals of the InterWebs.

Mainly, I didn’t understand the relationship between Internet Service Providers (like GoDaddy, Network Solutions and SiteGround), domain names, and hosting services.  I was also ignorant about e-mail providers, API’s, web forms, etc.. And other concepts. But lets not let the list get too lengthy.

I’m not sure if many of you know this, but I maintain five web sites…some for myself and others as a volunteer to help out friends.

Some of the web sites (like this blog) are very simple. The blog has very few requirements for complex technology.  The other web sites require a bit more functionality. They use web forms, integration with PayPal, Square and/or Stripe and event scheduling functions.

I explained back in October of last year how I started this blog with Blogger and recently converted it over to WordPress (self-hosted).  The other web sites, I created using Weebly, which is a  web site builder which is both simple to use and has quite a bit of functionality.

Services like Weebly and Blogger seem to blur the lines of hosting and domain name services.

Consolidated and Efficient!

Thanks to web expert friend Eric, I have been able to consolidate all of my web sites in a way that’s cost-effective and are fully expandable in terms of functionality.

Here’s what I do now:

• I purchase all of my domain names from GoDaddy…it seems to be one of the least expensive and reputable companies to get a domain name.
• I purchased a hosting package from SiteGround that allows me to host all five web sites in one place.  This includes all the photos from each site, any documents and all the pages and posts.
• I point my GoDaddy domains to my hosted websites on SiteGround
• I use the same hosting package from SiteGround to host all of my e-mail accounts for the various web sites.
• Instead of being nickled and dimed to death on Weebly for business accounts and extra fees for extra functionality, I pay for one hosting package and any necessary plug-ins for WordPress.
• I don’t pay for multiple weebly accounts and separate hosting packages on GoDaddy or Network Solutions anymore. I just have the one hosting package.

Just one note:  There are a lot of ISPs and my friend Eric has worked with all of them.  He highly recommends SiteGround.  Even if you’ve never heard of them, I agree with Eric, that they are very good and reasonably priced if you’re looking to organize your service providers.

Current Knitting

Finished the ribbing on the Ensign Brook DK Cardigan and started the arm hole shaping and the front neck shaping.

I was originally going to start knitting the two front sections and the back separately and switch to knitting them flat.  But then I realized the rows in the stitch pattern would be out-of-synch and I’d have to figure out how to do those twisted stitches from the purl side.  It was easier to just add extra steek stitches at the arm hole and continue to work in-the-round.