After the management change at UserLand, Dave Winer has decided not to continue personally hosting weblogs.com. Can’t say I blame him. It must be a thankless, 24×7 job. Very few people would want to do it without help. Very few people would offer continued help without pay.

I can understand the hurt and disappointment of those who had their blogs on weblogs.com. It sucks when your host has problems.

My first host (may they rot in hell) warned all its customers that their data center was being moved. What they neglected to tell us was that: (1) There would be no more dedicated IPs, regardless of the fact I paid for one, because all sites were being moved to a virtual sharing arrangement. (2) The easy-to-use menu and normal FTP was being replaced by a piece-of-shit, unusable panel that featured one-at-a-time, slow-as-snot file uploading (so easy to use when one is modifying multiple pages!). (3) Some sites would be down for a long, long time. Of the two sites I hosted with them, one never came back up. The other was up and down, up and down, for two weeks (at which point I pulled out). (4) Sometimes somebody else’s site would come up under my name. That was interesting. (5) When customers started pointing out that they were violating their own contract, they simply removed the agreement from their web site and replaced it with another one. (6) When the going got tough, they’d run like hell for the hills and simply stop answering their phones.

I did eventually get my money back from them. I had to go through their local Chamber Of Commerce, which was a route several of us took. It helped that I had a cached copy of their original agreement to send to the COC.

My next host had the unfortunate luck to have the backbone they connected to run under the World Trade Center. 09/11 was not a happy day for them. Unlike host # 1, however, they were perfectly willing to work with their customers, but they didn’t know when they’d be able to get back up again. I felt bad, because they were nice guys and had worked with me through a couple of sticky problems. But I had to go elsewhere. Again, unlike host # 1, host # 2 refunded my money with only a minimum of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Now I use successfulhosting.com. They’ve been stable, honest and helpful and I feel I’m getting good value for my money.

Note that I paid for all of these hosting accounts. Since #1 Son was in his first band, I’ve paid for multiple sites. Right now I’m paying for four. (Anybody want to buy bakwash.com? I’ll sell cheap!)

So, while I feel bad for the weblogs.com bloggers, still… they had four years of free hosting. That’s a pretty darn good deal in this day and age. I would never trust a free host to remain free.

And… you get what you pay for.