The more observant amongst my readers might have noticed that CabbieBlog looks different.

During the run-up to the London Olympics in a rare display of enthusiasm, I moved from the basic ‘free’ blog to a ‘self-hosted’ site.

Indulge me if I relate the difference between these two quite different ways to publish your thoughts.

With self-hosting, you get thousands of designs to display, and a plethora of add-ons called widgets, in which to give the site more variety, with a means to monetize your project.

But this comes at a cost

Hosting for all those keystrokes and pictures; a domain name to find your work on the internet, and the purchase of back-ups should the site become corrupted. I also indulged in a speed optimization plugin, a selection of typefaces; and Patreon as a means for any fans to support the work.

Other add-ons necessary are the yearly purchase of an SSL certificate to give the domain name an https prefix required by Google in its rankings and updating PHP, the programming language used to maintain WordPress for the second time in a year.

Protection from hacking, viruses, and malware. This entailed the removal of someone’s nasties inserted within my missives last year, an expensive and a problem which, believe it or not, got CabbieBlog banned from the internet.

Now, excuse me, but with all that protection the site should have been as sound as the Bank of England. Not so! More malware has been inserted by the back door into CabbieBlog.

Some of my favourite blogs, Beetleypete and Diamond Geezer would seem to have kept with the basic system and are none the worst for it, which proves that content triumphs over appearance.

So I have reverted to CabbieBlog’s second incarnation (the first was a defunct platform now no longer lamented), which will be similar, but different.

So please comment with your opinion, both good and otherwise.

Sorry for not posting any new material these last few weeks, normal service should commence next week.