Put your money where your mouth is

I should check the etymology of the statement “put your money where your mouth is.” It’s a pretty bad visual, and probably none too tasty either.

There’s a scene in an old Robin Williams movie “Moscow on the Hudson”. Robin plays a Russian immigrant who goes into a grocery store looking to buy toilet paper, an item which was apparently a scare resource in his home country. He comes upon the toilet paper Aisle, and becomes so overwhelmed by the variety and quantity that he swoons to a faint. That’s pretty much how I feel when shopping for a web host and registrar. My head is spinning.

First I had to choose a site name. The one name I cannot choose is the celebrity’s firstnamelastname, out of respect. I don’t feel right about buying it. I made a list of twenty possibilities. They started sounding pretty silly as I went along. I chose a short and easy to remember name. That was one of the advantages of a South African name attached to a .com qualifier. It’s usually available for sale.

After reading umpteen articles and flip flopping between full service organizations like Geocities, and do it yourself hosts, I went with popular choice: godaddy.com. It was cheap, and I used a coupon code. Bottom line of about $160.00 for three years, which is a pretty good deal. And I paid for it out of my Paypal money, which is sort of like phony money anyway. At checkout, godaddy flooded me with upsell “do you want that in a .net .org, .info”. boy, they’re pushy.

After all the virtual signing on the dotted lines, and all agreements were agreed to, I am now the proud parent of: a real website name, a ludicrous amount of gig and bandwidth, and some other whatnots I’ll never use. My first real piece of ad-free space. Wow. Breathe in, out. I ought to celebrate … or sleep.

I wouldn’t recommend godaddy for the novice. It’s not entirely intuitive what has to be done, after the money transfers. I was sitting there with a login i.d., looking for how to park the site. Found that. Then I went to search for the ftp screen to upload my site. Couldn’t find it. Discovered I had to set the account up first, then wait 24 hours for them to send me an introductory email regarding site upload. Unless you choose the “make a site” option for more bucks, godaddy is not too user friendly.

Up to this point, I was just playing. Now that I’ve forked over money, I’ve got to cut the apron strings and let the kid toddle off.

First, sleep.