Your Own Voice | You, Me and a Lifetime

OK folks, we seriously need to assess our use of social media platforms … Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. It is time to stand against the politicized censorship imposed by the “big tech” social media hosts. What is the best way to do that, you ask? Start your own website!

Full disclosure: The day I began putting this site together, I knew absolutely nothing about website creation. I was not familiar with the various software packages that greatly simplify website construction. I picked the software that I am using (WordPress), because someone asked me to assist with a church site that had been created in WordPress. In response, I bought a copy of the book, WordPress for Beginners 2020, by Dr. Andy Williams and, in just a few days, I was experimenting with this site.

To get your site on the web, you need to find a Hosting company. I have been exposed to two such vendors. One company had some nice features (and a nationally recognized name), but those fancy features often did not work and, the servers that placed our site on the internet were incredibly slow. When our server crashed, the content of our site was replaced by an incredibly dated back-up copy (a back-up is a copy of your site that is saved for emergencies; back-ups should be updated regularly). My second experience with a hosting company has been QTH.com. The company is small and locally managed by its creator, Scott Neader. Scott has often answered my technical and administrative questions at night and on the weekends. Server reliability has been top notch and my site loads quickly. In addition, there are some initial steps, such as installing an SSL certificate, which Scott does for you (the SSL certificate enables secure (https) connections to your site). Of course, he, like all the other hosting companies, will provide WordPress as part of his hosting package; there is nothing else to buy. Here is a list of the simple steps required to get your personal website up and running:

Buy the book WordPress for Beginners 2020, or equivalent; bear in mind that I cannot vouch for others, as this is the text that I used.
Jump on QTH.com and find an available domain name, e.g., “bellybuttonlint.net.” You do that at this link: https://hosting.qth.com/
Register your domain name (this too is done right on the QTH.com website).
Purchase a hosting package
Go into your control panel and, follow the instructions to load WordPress

This won’t be all that intimidating once you’ve read through the opening chapters of WordPress for Beginners. I’m not kidding, I am reasonably sure than anyone who is savvy enough to use Facebook, will be able to construct a decent website using WordPress and the services of a good hosting company.

Now you may be thinking, “What if I want people to be able to comment on my posts.” That is as easy as “allowing comments” for a given post. Your next question is, “How will friends find my site?” That too is easy. You can provide friends with a link to your site via email, text messaging, your social media account; You can even use a business card. I had one thousand cards printed when I began building the site. When I want to invite someone to drop by, I just hand them a card and say, “Come see me sometime.” There are also tricks for making your site more visible to search engines, Google, or Microsoft Bing, for example. That process is called “website optimization;” the technology for doing that, however, is not something you need to worry about on day one; just concentrate on getting your site up and running.

Now, what about content? Web hosting companies seem far less likely to “politically weaponize” their content screening than are the big social media operations. Here is a link to Scott’s terms of service: https://hosting.qth.com/terms.php

The great part about QTH.com is that I can know the man who runs it; if you conduct your site as a reasoned lady or gentlemen, if you substantiate what you say and respect others, even though you may believe that they are wrong, it is my opinion that Scott will give you a totally fair shake.

So, my friends, let us jointly hand “big tech” their walking papers. Your personal website gives you a worldwide presence, and one that has a much better chance of being controlled by you and not by “big tech!” I strongly suggest that you give it a try.