Website Design

Before I launch into my seabird volunteer adventures, I have a postscript to the domain hosting saga.

I registered theandygibb.com with GoDaddy, who give you all sorts of freebies for your £6.40 a year. For instance, I had found with pokerbird.net that I could redirect it to this blog without having to host the domain elsewhere. (I also bought and redirected thepokerbird.com just to get round the non-availability of pokerbird.com. Again, I am the Pokerbird!)

In fact, GoDaddy offer free hosting and a slew of CMSs (Content Management Systems), which was perfect because I wanted to use Drupal. So, theandygibb got a Unix hosting account. Problem: all the nice add-on applications, which include the CMSs, are only free for a paid hosting plan. Well, three quid a month isn't going to break the bank but I still had one other avenue to explore.

When I got back from my world travels, I toyed with the idea of returning to computing and tinkered with Microsoft’s ASP.NET. I played enough to supplement my existing HTML and build a half-decent website reasonably quickly. I'd try that.

Hell’s teeth: I'd signed for a Unix account, to get the Drupal. I hadn’t got Windows, which runs .NET. (You see how this stuff can drive you round the bend?)

Nothing daunted, I set theandygibb.net up for Windows and shan't bore you with the trials of using ASP and Visual Web Developer, except to assure you that they were manifold. You can see the result by following the link. Pretty kludgy, huh? And with a GoDaddy banner across the top. I should have known.

So it looks I’m having to pay to get Drupal on theandygibb.com but I’ll let that idea marinate a while.