How NOT To Get Banned (part 2)

If you want to avoid getting banned on someone’s blog you can follow the instructions. These include setting up your own WordPress site. However, like all WordPress bloggers, you will put yourself at the mercy of your new overlords’ Terms of Service. If you act like Artisanal Toad or Boxer, exercising your right to say whatever you want, you’ll probably get banned eventually. Or you can be like Dalrock and cave to the Terms of Service, self-censoring to keep yourself online.

There is an alternative: get a domain name (quite cheap) and self-host. This requires a bit more work, but no one can take it away from you.* It costs more money, but if you are financially stable, it’s not all that much.

Perhaps, you think, you’ll be fine. You don’t believe in status, marrying multiple Ninja wives, that sex=marriage, or that spanking your wives is a good thing. Please don’t be so naive. Just like working hard by getting good education and a good job prepares you to absorb hard times, self-hosting is the best way to fight censorship of your blog.

If you are not willing to do this, at least take backups of your site. This way when you do get banned, it will be easy to setup your own replacement site. Just make sure you setup WordPress with your own domain so your links don’t break. This is easy, but it does cost money, meaning you’ll have to financially support your censoring overlords. Consider the consequences of this. Alternatively, you can get something like this for free using domain and path forwarding with SSL.

* You’ll really have to tick off some very important and powerful people before you’ll lose your site. It’s possible that your hosting service could kick you off. You just find another. If you get your domain name taken, you probably did something amazingly illegal or ticked off the President or members of Congress. Don’t do that.

I do not use a hosting service. I have a mini-Linux server that cost me around $200. It has no moving parts and costs about $6/year in electricity, so it will last nearly forever. It’s my equipment and no one can take it from me. It can be hosted anywhere: I can move it from one server co-location to another. I can even setup redundant servers in multiple locations if I want.