Once again, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. After struggling with rival phone carriers and sitting on hold for two months, I finally have a working phone with a cheap plan. But I failed to learn from that lesson.
I thought I’d try again with getting hosted at GreenGeeks. Yes, this blog, this WordPress (dot-com) product. GreenGeeks has a setup to host WordPress (dot-org) accounts, and I thought I’d try that. Much of my motivation was the fear that one day WordPress would suss me out and shut me down. Their TOS on Mature Content sets guidelines for what they will and won’t permit, though of course it’s not definitive and can change any day. I figured I’d have better chances with Minnesota state law and hosting myself, rather than waiting for WordPress to decide I was unacceptable.
Was this reasonable? I don’t know, maybe not. Maybe my odds are better with Automattic.
Anyway, GreenGeeks was unable to help me. They say that they offer one free site transfer, so I put in a migration request. They let me know I hadn’t given them enough information, so I provided more. They gave me instructions to login to my cPanel, which I didn’t ask for, and when I told them I don’t know how to use FTP, they gave me instructions on this. I filled out another migration request and this was canceled with a polite reprimand. Meanwhile, I received a warning via Jetpack that someone had tried to access my account from Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine, and then a separate message from GreenGeeks saying that I had “two-way” authentication set up. They meant “two-factor,” obviously, and now I was feeling uncomfortable about the whole process.
Their Sales dept., however, was very helpful when I said I’d like to terminate my account and request a refund. He guided me to submit that request, without any of the retention hassle that Boost Mobile had put me through so many times. I went back to my domain registrar, repointed the nameservers to WordPress, and look, I’m back online. If you checked in and found my site down recently, it had to do with this whole mess.
In other news, my LinkTree account is looking very robust lately. Anyone who wanted to keep track of everything I’m doing would do well to make this a bookmark.
And some of you will know that I recently started a Substack. Not sure what I’ll do with it, but I think it’d make sense to move my existential rants and writer’s process to Substack and save this blog for returning to short story writing. What do you think? Anyway, if you don’t mind being bothered at random intervals, go ahead and subscribe to my newsletter.
Since reestablishing my WordPress account, I’ve been poking through the menus and learning what else is available to me. I can’t set up a shop to sell my hardcopy books without upgrading to the Business account, and I’m asking Automattic’s AI support staff how the Links page is supposed to be used without a widget to support it. But I have built a Portfolio with four of my most prominent projects outside of my writing focus.
Coming Up: All my requested library books have come in, so I’ll be undertaking a self-driven crash course in “ethical porn,” and believe me, I’ll let everyone know what I’ve learned.
Also, I’m finally buying all the necessary equipment to start my podcast. I’ll find a good tutorial on using Audacity, script out a dozen episodes, and then… who knows.
Aborigen 
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