I am intrigued by the growth of the IndieWeb, owning your domain and static websites. I certainly agree with the notion of not relying on big corporations and I have an ongoing project to divest my dependency on software produced by major market players. However, although I own my own domain, my website is hosted by Squarespace. I’ve not really had any problems with them over the last 11 years and I would describe our business relationship as equitable. However, the monthly subscription price has increased over time and is likely to keep on doing so. It has crossed my mind as to whether there is a suitable alternative. However, if I were to migrate Contains Moderate Peril elsewhere I suspect it would be logistically complex and problematic. There is no facility within the Squarespace administrative dashboard to determine the size of your existing site or what file types it is comprised of. Hence I had to run an external audit script to determine this. To date the site comprises of 4.5GB of data, most of which is audio and image files. It’s not a lot to move. The next issue would be creating a website with the same layout, formatting and functionality as the previous Squarespace site. That’s something I could potentially do my self but it is not my primary skill set, so it could take some time. However, I don’t see the rebuilding of the website and migrating the data as the primary problem of such a project. The main issue would be where to host it. I do not have the physical infrastructure at home to host a website. Nor would I want to. Then there is the issue of the bandwidth. Contains Moderate Peril has a growing audience and I have no idea regarding the bandwidth or data usage that the site currently uses, because all of that is handled by Squarespace. So the obvious alternative would be to find a hosting company that provides comparable services. Netlify, Switchweb and Static Host UK all seem to fit the bill. Some initial research indicates that I would not meet the requirements for a free account, so would have to pay for hosting. Therein lies the main issue. Will that cost be any cheaper than Squarespace? Also being the master of your own website also means you have to fix it. Squarespace provide good customer support. This has simply been a thought experiment. At present I have no immediate plan to migrate the website. It works well and sits on robust infrastructure. I’ve seldom had any down time or major technical problems. I haven’t quite yet finished fine tuning my blog either and I still have ideas regarding some changes that I wish to make. However, things change and the cost of hosting via Squarespace is currently £240 a year. At present I have a cordial business relationship with the company but that may not always be the case. If I were to migrate the site it would be a ton of work, although I do not doubt that it could be done. Like many things in life it is a question of watching, waiting and acting when it is prudent to do so. Permalink