Chapter four

Getting Ready to Say It

> Stef: I need to move my blog. A friend set it up for me as a
favor, but I can't always access it when I want to and
sometimes the system goes down.


> Eric: It definitely sounds like you don't control the blog to
the extent you should. And what's going to happen to it
at the end of the school year when you all leave the
dorm? You're right, you should move it. I can help you
with that, but before we move it, why don't you join us
at our next session.


> Stef: We're going to talk about naming and hosting Web sites
and other related things. It'll be useful stuff for you
to learn, because ultimately it's about getting and
keeping control of your Web presence, whether it's a
blog or a standard Web site.

Stef phoned me shortly after my session with Claude and Anita. "I need to move my blog," she said, obviously frustrated. I asked her why she wanted to move it. "Because," she answered, "I want more control over it."

It turns out that the blog was running on a computer in her friend John's dorm room. "He set it up for me as a favor," she said, "but I can't always access it when I want to. Or his system goes down-last weekend we lost power for an hour in the dorm. He was away at his parents' house, though, so my blog was down until he came back and restarted his computer."

"Why didn't he use a blogging service instead of hosting it on his own computer?" I asked.

"He wanted to learn how to set up a blog, I guess," she said. "He's kind of a geek." Realizing to whom she was talking, her tone turned apologetic. "Not that being a geek is bad, of course! I didn't mind it at first when I was learning to blog, but now it's more trouble than it's worth."

"It definitely sounds like you don't control the blog to the extent you should," I agreed. "And what's going to happen to it at the end of the school year when you all leave the dorm? You're right, you should move it. I can help you with that, but before we move it, why don't you join us at our next session. Your dad was going to invite you anyway."

"Are you going to talk about blogs?" she asked.

"Only indirectly. We're going to talk about naming and hosting Web sites and other related things. It'll be useful stuff for you to learn, because ultimately it's about getting and keeping control of your Web presence, whether it's a blog or a standard Web site." Stef agreed to come and said she'd arrange things with Claude.

We all met the next Saturday afternoon at Anita's house. Her husband had taken the children to visit their grandmother, so the house was quiet and Anita seemed quite relaxed.

"As I told Stef," I began, "today we're going to talk about naming and hosting your sites."