The New Year is the time to make changes, right? Well, I decided I wanted to drastically change my Web site. I had been using Microsoft’s Front Page 2000 to design the site, but I was not very skillful with it. In order to make my site look up-to-date, I either needed to learn more about the software or buy another. So—I decided to check out hosting companies that offered sitebuilder software along with their hosting plans.

Making the decision was a slow process, since I am not a technical genius. I looked at Godaddy, EZ Christian Hosting, Hostgator, SquareSpace, and Webs.com. All offer free trials, and I did experiment with all of them. I won’t get into all the pros and cons of the different companies. I’ll just tell you what I decided.

Since I wanted to have a hosted WordPress site to house all my blogs, I ruled out all of the sitebuilders. However, I seriously considered Squarespace because the look and function of their designs is very much like WordPress. When I checked into pricing, though, I decided against Squarespace.  I found that, if I wanted to have my own domain name (which I already have and want to continue to use), I would have to go with the Pro plan at $14 a month rather than the $8-a-month basic plan. See pricing here.

I chose to go with Hostgator with WordPress, and here is the result: www.emilyakin.com. Hosting cost is about half what it would have been with Squarespace, and the WordPress theme was free on WordPress.org.

I’m not done yet, but I will be transferring some of this free blog’s content to my new site. If you are a subscriber, I may be able to change the feed and save you the trouble of re-subscribing. More on that later. Meanwhile, feel free to comment on my new site here on this post.