I moved my web host from Pair.com to Bluehost.com. Why? Because it was insane not to. A cursory comparison of what they offer for the price makes it pretty obvious. (Bluehost vs. Pair)
But it’s also because I wanted to change from Movable Type to WordPress.
I really miss getting comments on a regular basis, and Movable Type has no built-in sophisticated methods for combatting this problem except for their TypeKey service, and spammers were even using that. WordPress has proxy checking and other things built in. But WordPress requires the use of MySQL, and to do that at Pair meant upgrading to a higher service level for another $100 — that’s just nuts when BlueHost is a very respectable outfit and offers better features at their basic level than pair offers even at their most advanced level of service.
I managed to get everything installed, though, very easily. I’m still not sure if I want to go about trying to be sure any possible “permalink” out there on the web will end up working for memekitchen and inkblurt, etc. I figure people can search for it on here if they get a 404 (I need to edit that 404 template — add to my todo list).
I have to say the WordPress interface is clunky compared to Movable Type, and there are some confusing things about it (for example when you’re editing or creating a regular “page” sometimes the tab tells you it’s a “post” instead, and the “post” tab/interface is used even when you’re editing other things that don’t quite count as posts) . Plus I’m hoping that a lot of functionality I was expecting might be found in their considerable PlugIn offerings.
Still, it’s free, so why not try it out?
Anyway, feel free to leave a comment. I want to see if activity can pick up now that people don’t have to register with a separate service. And I’m curious to see how much spam actually gets stopped by filtering out open proxies and such.