Nostalgia: Back to the Spirit of the Onion

We are presently riding on the back of blogspot.com, a Blogger free site for  bloggers like us. In fact, The Onion Spirit was a happy, web-hosted Wordpress blog until some 'bloodthirsty' hijackers wrenched the domain name from us because we failed to renew it.

We admit we screwed up because we were sleepy-eyed onion aficionados allowing our onionspirit.com to be spirited away right under our nose  in the middle of the night.

We lost everything and had to restart again with this Blogger site. We love the Onion Spirit title so much that we have to carry on with the title no matter what. So shall we say this here blog is like fresh onions - and not the ones lying in the box in that corner where they're all wrinkled and dried.

We have checked on the stolen onionspirit.com and found it has become a nonsensical directory of some kind. What a shame. But we will plod on with a  renewed spirit on our new Blogger platform.

We'd think we have a great header showing two silly onions with bouncy spirit. Each time we look at the red onions on our header and immediately we get tears in our eyes!

We'll be around this part for a while until we've decided on who will be our new website host farther down the road.  We certainly would like to see a traffic build-up before we jump ship! Or maybe we stick with this one, being free and all that. -  RedOnion.

Choosing a Web Host

Meanwhile, we've been browsing around for some tips on how to make a smooth switch to another host. We'd like to share with you some of the things we've learned about choosing a web host:

1.  Support - always check on this to see the response from the host. One of the best ways is to test them by calling in their support desk.

2.  Beware of scam - be wary when a host claims to have unlimited space or bandwidth. The average web site only uses about 50MB space and less than one gig bandwidth a month. If the host offers big numbers and small bucks, it's time you start to smell something - not the onions though.

3.  Yearly payment? -  A hosting company should not insist you have to make a yearly payment. If you're gonna be happy with the host, you'll be sticking around for a long time. Does it matter whether it's a monthly or yearly payment? But, of course, the choice is yours.

4.  Domain name - Only buy your domain name from a hosting provider if you know very well that they will place the information in the WHOIS. They could blackmail you if your domain info is not in the WHOIS.

[ For all technical purposes whoever has their information in the WHOIS is the owner. A domain owner doesn't go by who paid for it; it goes by whose information is on the WHOIS. To check a WHOIS on the domain, go there and type "domainname.com" and click submit. You're the domain owner if your address, email, and phone number show up.]

5.  Web Hosting Reviews - You're advised not to believe anything you read on these hosting review directories. Search Google to find real reviews by individuals who have used their hosting.

6.  Uptime claim - There's no 100% uptime. If they say so, then they are lying. It's all about server maintenance, security and software updates.

So there you are, some food for thought before you pick the right web host. - RedOnion