blogcn.com, the largest blogging hosting provider (like blogger.com), has been down for about 8 days.

Captured from blogcn.com’s homepage on July 21, 2004. Screenshot in courtesy of blogcn.com

Massive bloggers were affected and became homeless. It breaks the update pace of bloggers and caused big problems in the blogsphere. I am using my RSS reader to pull RSS from other bloggers. 1/3 of them are hosted on blogcn.com and now, the source became unavailable.

To Host or Not

“Where to host my blog today?” is the question in many bloggers’ mind. Many changed BSP (blogging service provider). When a service goes down, people have to think of ways of migrating it to another service. Sometimes they lose all the previous post. It will be heartbreaking.

I will NOT Host on BSP

I don’t want to host my blog at any Blog Service Provider. Instead, I choose ISP (Internet Service Provider) to host my virtual host and run blogging software by myself.

The baseline is to keep the URL of my old article never change.

Run Your Blog Under Your Own Domain

I regret I didn’t start my own domain earlier. My first homepage is hosted on Kali with URL http://www.kali.com.cn/myhome/wjs in 1997. The site does not provide free personal website service now so my site disappeared permentantly from the earth.

If I have had more money at that time, I may have started my own domain. (Actually, it is a matter of mindset. Everybody has money to have a nice dinner, which is enough for one year of domain hosting. Yes. In Shanghai, 30 RMB per person can be pretty good dinner already) The domain name is life long assert. I may change my server but the URL remains the same. Nobody noticed my server switch (first time, second time) or IP change, since my URL remains. What if I switch a BSP, for example, from www.blogcn.com to www.blogbus.com or others. The URL changes. Readers get lost and old links break. Linkage is called by somebody to be currency on the Internet. The more links you have, the more Internet Assert you have.

To register a .com domain name has dropped to 6.95 USD at GoDaddy.com. It is not expensive.

Considered to Host Your Site at Home?

Technical guys like to host a website on personal computer at home. Run is doing so. Hacky also did so. I did it too at early stage. Later, I gave up. I explain it to people this way: “When I start it for the first week, it is exciting. After two week, I started to wonder the meaning of running the server, consuming electricity power and sending out noise and heat. Just to serve the 20-50 visits per day (30% comes from myself)?

At last, I decided to put the hot potato in a cheap server room. 380 RMB is not bad for me (at companycn.com)

Start Your Own Domain and Hosted, Blogcn Users

I suggest people who suffer from the pause of service of blogcn to register a personal domain rightaway and host your blog under your own name. Since blogging is part of personal identity on the Internet, so should your URL. Then find a cheap hosting provider and install blogging software like MovableType. Then you are sure that it will follow you for a long time.

Resources for the Move

• My blogging category
• Run Your Blog with Your Own Domain Name
• My MovableType suggesetions
• Backstage of Wangjianshuo.com