I am indeed back. Back from the dark and confusing world of the paid for website and blog.
I guess blogger had been spoiling me over the years; what with the whole freeness of it all and the many and varied things you can do, but when you are constantly bombarded with advice about getting a paid for site that enables you to do pretty much everything that a free blog page cannot, and that no one will take you seriously as a business if you don't have a professional website, then eventually you fall under the huge weight of marketing hype..
And this is how I stumbled upon WIX, and fell over.
I spent hours, and I mean hours, trawling through YouTube and the various online sites taking the advice of experts, and it all eventually came down to WIX and Wordpress. But I could not decide which one to go with; so with no actual valid option, I flipped a coin.
It came down WIX side up
I wish it hadn't.
I signed up, attempted to build the site over a few nights, made endless frustrated calls to their helpdesk---all seemingly manned by people who really didn't want to be there---and decided to show their frustration by making me feel like an absolute idiot---So eventually I just ignored them and scratched my head until I got it right.
And that took nearly a month! Let's face it, I had an empire to build in-between all their 'easy set up' issues, and to be honest, if the Romans had had to deal with WIX before heading out across the Rubicon to bash a widely unsuspecting world on the head, they'd still be there now...waiting on the hotline, listening to Wagner's ring cycle.
But eventually I did get a site I could live with, not the site I wanted, but a site of sorts that fell roughly under the description of 'Website'.
But it kept on crashing, losing post after post. Images could not be resized, like their adverts said they could. The reason for this was simple, apparently.
It turns out that all the adverts I saw were for the old WIX interface, an interface that they loudly proclaimed to be endless in its variety and would do away with the need for a professional website designer.
It turns out that they decided to do away with the old site a week before I came bowling along with money in my hand and a silly expression of confidence on my face.
Anyway, one day, just over a year later, this defeated cartoonist was building a blogger site for his partner, when he realised she could actually do more with her free site than he could with a paid for one. And it looked better.
I ran the Blogger site for her, until she became competent and confident enough to be left alone to blog without a safety net---which in all honesty wasn't that long. I used to look at her with envious eyes as she effortlessly made her site do things that mine just could not.
Then I asked the question.
What had my site got that her site didn't? Well not a lot, actually. Maybe the word 'Blogspot' in the title and an option to make her mobile phone site different in design to the computer one. And seeing as most people run their online life through their phones, this really wasn't an issue.
But the real kicker was when I realised that she could turn her site into a multi lingual one at the touch of a button. I went to my site and found that to do the same, I had to either translate the whole page myself, or pay a translator to do it for me; language by language.
It was also around this time that I lost three posts that I had slaved hard and long over, saving it as I went along (something blogger does automatically I hasten to add), and when the third one disappeared without trace, I lost my stuff!
But when I contacted WIX about this they simply stated that these things happen from time to time. My answer was: 'Not on Blogger it bloody well doesn't!' They just shrugged their online shoulders and said 'it was probably something I did and couldn't I just write it again?'.
And with that, I said I would not be renewing my contract with them and put the phone down on the world of pain and frustration that is WIX.
So here I am, once again with blogger.
It may be free, and some purists out there will insist that customers don't take you seriously if you don't have a professional site, but all I can say is this: 'I'm a cartoonist, I don't want to be taken seriously. That's kind of the whole point!'
And to prove it, here's a few cartoons.
Thank you.
Oh incidentally, my partner is a top Chef and she brings her skills to the public and passes her craft on so you can produce amazing food yourself. Interested? Good, then here's the link