Your website is your sanctuary, don’t build it on quicksand! With the development of technology, a presence on the internet is increasingly important. Your website builds connections and gives you a platform to promote yourself or your business. But it’s also more; it’s an extension of your physical assets, your sanctuary in the digital world.
The latest buzzword online is ‘cloud’. Everyone is going on about how fantastic it is, but what exactly is it? At the heart of it, ‘the cloud’ is little more than a hosted service. You hand over your money to a provider and they give you hosting, software and white-label design.
It sounds like a great deal on the surface, but all you are really doing is giving up control of your website to some company. In most cases, you do not own or have access to the source code of such a website, so you are totally at the mercy of the company.
Hosted services are nothing new, GeoCities was one such service on the early internet. But like everything else in technology, the thriving popular solution of today becomes the desert island of tomorrow. If you depend on a hosted solution as the times move on, you could be left trapped in an outdated system with no easy way to move on. Or worse, taken down when a once thriving company goes bankrupt. Its like building your house on quicksand.
I believe that websites, your sanctuary online, should be built on dependable digital foundations. For that reason every website I develop is created using open source software and open standards. Your website, source code included, is your property alone. This ensures that you are never locked into a single provider and eases your migration as technology rolls ever forward.