WELCOME to my new home!!! Many months in the making, this site is the new destination for Choosing Beauty readers; so glad you’ve followed me to this neck of the woods!
I love the look and feel of this new space {and really hope you do, too}, but my excitement over this major move is about more than aesthetics. It is about me waving my victory flag, finally able to feel awesome about where this blog lives and feeling in control of my blog’s content and future.
When I started this blog over five years ago, I was a novice; I went with whatever was easiest and cheapest, which was a free blog platform called Blogspot {now Blogger}. It was very user-friendly, but I wasn’t aware that by hosting my blog on a free platform, I wasn’t in full control of its destiny. It was kind of like squatting in someone else’s house; you have no say if they move your stuff or turn off the power – you’re just happy to have a place to stay. And any of those free services have the right to move/change/delete your content. I’ve wanted to move to WordPress.org {the paid version of WordPress} for a long time. There was just one problem…
Years ago, I purchased all of my domains – including choosingbeauty.com – through GoDaddy, an affordable and well-marketed Internet service. They convinced me I needed all kinds of protection plans and analytics programs, and I took the bait. And because I wanted a Choosing Beauty email address, I bought my email plan through them, too. I felt really good about having all that stuff in one place – until I realized how out of sync that place was with my core values.
I didn’t feel good about paying money every month to a company that uses leather-clad, cleavage-baring women to advertise their web products. {How sad is it that most Americans know Danica Patrick more for her racy ads than for her race car driving!?} The more I talked with web designers and programmers, I heard horror stories about Go Daddy – from creepy management to over-charging. My last straw came last spring, when GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons killed an African elephant for sport {and celebrated on video}, then tried to justify it. I was so disgusted and set the wheels in motion to start moving all of my stuff away from the Internet giant.
It’s taken many months and lots of pulling teeth to move everything, but the timing is perfect: just last week, after GoDaddy threw its support behind SOPA and angered millions of Internet services and bloggers, a massive {and successful} “Leave GoDaddy” campaign was launched. In the last week, thousands of domains have been moved from GoDaddy to other providers {like HostGator, where I moved}. As of today, none of my online dealings – no domains, no email, no nothing – lives with GoDaddy. I realize none of you ever knew any of it did, but I did – and it just felt wrong to let Choosing Beauty be affiliated with a company like that.
These moves were a great big undertaking and I couldn’t have done it without Michele Bergh of Be Inspired Design. She is my behind-the-scenes angel {and those of you taking my blogging ecourse will get to know her soon!}. Even last night, we were emailing each other at 2am about final details. I am breathing a giant sigh of RELIEF today! There’s lots of goodness in store for Choosing Beauty – and I’m so glad you’re here to be a part of it.
