Buzzword.Com will shut down on May 21, which means the last two dozen weblogs on the free Manila hosting service have one month to find a new home.
I've enjoyed running the server for the past two years, but I'm doing all of my work these days on Linux servers running Java, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Buzzword runs on UserLand Frontier with Windows 2000 Server.
All Buzzword weblogs can keep using their domain names after they move, so Google pagerank and existing traffic won't be lost. I'll provide free name service for any publisher who requests it.
There are several options for bloggers to consider:
- Move your site without modification to a commercial Manila host. Erin Clerico of Weblogger.Com has offered Buzzword users a discount -- the first year of hosting for $49.95 -- and UserLand also provides commercial hosting.
- Move your site to Movable Type, WordPress or another tool that supports Movable Type's export format.
- Create an HTML archive of your existing site.
The easiest option is to stay on Manila. BookNotes is moving to Weblogger.Com today, and it takes around 10 minutes to export the site, copy the files over and install it on the new server.
Moving to other weblogging software takes around 8-16 hours, depending on the size of the weblog, and requires some testing to ensure that all links and images continue to work properly. Some features won't be copied over, such as the site's blogroll and page templates, but all weblog entries, articles and images will be transferred.
Creating an HTML archive takes 1-2 hours, but you won't be able to edit the site afterward with Manila or any other blogging tool.
Buzzword users should let me know which option you'd like to pursue. I can package sites for export to another Manila host at no cost and handle the other options for a fee.
When I launched Buzzword, the server was front-page news all over the place. A lot of bloggers wanted to know what I'd do with 3,018 sites that had been hosted on Weblogs.Com for years until they were taken offline in an abrubt shutdow-, er, server outage.
With a lot of help, I installed the blogs on a dedicated Super Celeron 2.4 Windows server at ServerMatrix that had a monthly 1,200 gigabyte bandwidth limit (later expanded to 1,400).
The server never exceeded 150 gigabytes a month in bandwidth, primarily because less than 100 of those 3,018 blogs were still active. My total cost for two years has been $2,200 -- a $400 setup charge plus $79 a month for hosting and backups -- and around 2-4 hours a week to keep the server ticking.
