Been struggling with tech issues for the past week. I’ve been posting as usual but something broke and I decided to switch back to WP.com and ditch FlyWheel. Giving it a try was crucial as I thought I would be able to do a few things that I wasn’t able to do here (upload plug-ins and customize the site further, basically get the business plan features for a lot less money) and I was so damn wrong!
While I still won’t claim that WP.com is the best (I’m hoping someday I definitely would) but it is the real deal when it comes to lazy solopreneurs like me who’ve got better things to do (like building a business) than tweak settings on their site’s dashboard every day.
Now, the folks at Flywheel are pretty good. They get what they’re doing. It’s just that the service isn’t for me. And yes, I should’ve paid attention to their big bold branding that basically said, “made for designers and agencies.” Which means I wasn’t a qualified prospect in the first place! And I was silly enough to think, “let me give it a try anyway.”
The result — besides the pathetic experience, I almost lost a week’s worth of content (my posts). Thankfully, I’ve been using Ulysess (it’s for Mac only, unfortunately, and no I didn’t switch back to an iOS device) I still don’t use an to bang out my posts (still getting used to Gutenburg) and hence, had a copy of it all. I has to repost them all this evening… and am so much in peace with myself.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve transitioned out of WP.com. The last time I did (to BlueHost), I realised how difficult it was to maintain and keep an eye of the updates and other aspects of managing a website. And after wasting dozens of hours, I decided to switch back and resell the hosting plan to a friend.
I thought I’d learned my lesson. But I didn’t. Had an almost similar experience and chose to come back to where I belong. And I think I get why I keep coming back to WP.com — they help me save time and stick to my philosophy of keeping things simple.
Phew! That’s some confession!
Sometimes I wish I knew how to design my sites but if I’d known… that would’ve kept away from all the other great things that I love to do. Like helping people.
Thanks, WordPress.com! (There! I said it!)