It looks like the folks at WordPress.com have been attacking sexually-oriented blogs again. One blog, Denying Thumper has been around longer than us. Apparently, the folks at his hosting company (Automatic.com) suddenly decided his content is not suitable for them to carry. This is insane since his site is a well-respected male chastity blog with a long history of well-written posts. If you go to his URL (Link), you get a page from WordPress.com saying that the content was removed because it was unsuitable for their tender, right-wing minds.
Years ago, this blog was hosted by Automatic. I was threatened several times regarding our “adult” content. It cost us over $300 a year for their hosting services. I moved us to a less expensive and adult-friendly service provider. We moved again when the new provider got too expensive. We made another move for technical reasons. For the last couple of years, our blog lives in the cloud. It’s a bit more expensive, but then we’ve grown quite a bit. Most importantly, there aren’t any censors or technical limits. I’m very happy with our hosting provider.
There are two big outfits that offer free hosting. Automatic (wordpress.com) is probably the largest. You can get a starter blog going for free. If you want any frills, expect to start paying. Blogger, a Google company, is the other main provider. A few years ago, Google decided to eliminate all adult blogs on its service. After a huge fuss by the online community, Google reversed itself and is happy to host adult content. Unlike wordpress.com, Google puts up an interstitial page with a warning in front of adult sites. I think that’s a fair way to do things. It’s possible to have an acceptable-if-basic blog for free on Blogger.
Of course, beggars can’t be choosers and there is very little selection when it comes to site design on the Google service. WordPress.com offers a lot more design flexibility. The tradeoff is that WordPress limits its free sites to very limited content and will start charging if too many people visit the sites. Blogger doesn’t do that.
Most hosting services censor their customers’ content. Sex-friendly hosting companies are rare. There are a few. One that I like is EasyWP, which is offered by Namecheap.com. Namecheap is one of the world’s largest domain name registrars. They are famous for their steadfast defense of their customer’s privacy. Other registrars like Godaddy have frequently caved to government pressure and revealed details about their customers. Anyway, Namecheap offers EasyWP which is an inexpensive, easy-to-use WordPress hosting service. We used it for a couple of years. We only left because they restricted the use of a plugin we like. It’s the one that shows links to the latest posts on blogs we follow.
Quite a few bloggers have no experience working with websites. There is a learning curve associated with starting any blog. Services like Blogger and WordPress.com make it a little easier. EasyWP is just as simple to use as WordPress.com. It’s too bad that WordPress.com is so anti-sex. I hope that Thumper decides to move his site to a friendlier host.
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