Ask HN: Am I Getting Paranoid?

[Phileosopher]

In general, I've been maintaining a few WordPress-native sites since about 2018 without any issues, but these past few months have created several semi-connected experiences that seem highly suspicious to have happened all at once:

1. My big-box email hosting provider downgraded my website limit to 3 sites total. As a hobby, I've made about 6-7 sites, so I had to move, though it seems like this site limit is becoming industry-standard.

2. Another change at the same time has been that CardDAV server support has effectively been deprecated, making it difficult to synchronize contacts. My new hosting provider doesn't seem to host CardDAV, so I may have to self-host my contacts soon.

3. I had had an email list, but apparently sending via SMTP is no longer natively run through the CRM anymore without a paid service or self-hosting?

4. I've had organic traffic of 1-5 people on any given day to my sites (it's boring, evergreen content), but as of a few weeks ago my blog-posting site was dropped down to nothing.

5. When I was poking around the zone editor, it seems I can only ever update MX records anymore on the hosting site. I'm guessing that's a standard hosting provider situation?

6. Migrating emails out of the service is now a cumbersome one-at-a-time experience.

I'm not presently getting paid to do what I love (i.e., not paid to do tech work), so I'd like some perspective. Are these issues part of a well-connected effort to standardize the walled-garden approach of the internet, dark patterns to steer an upsell, or simply bad luck on my end for everything to be happening all at once?

[simne]

That's why I don't like cheap services and cheap products like WP.

You don't tell anything special. All these things are typical underdog experience, happen periodically when use very strict economy.

Mathematics model is very similar to oversell of air tickets. Idea, that constantly, few humans late to plane or don't fly for some reason, so companies sell more tickets than seats. Sometimes all people meet inside plane and see oversell.

Some things may become slightly better if you just switch to other cheap hoster (this is like recalculate sharding). But if you will switch to significantly more expensive price (better also change hoster) you will see very different world.

Or you could just wait, and when happen next economy grow, some things will resolve themselves.

[hnfong]

The well connected effort is called economics (specifically an anticipated recession and the end of zero interest rate “free money”)

[anigbrowl]

I'd say correlated but not connected. Most companies rode the wave of rosy growth predictions for years; the last few years suggest that the world is having some tough times and money is not going to magically fall from the sky so companies are shifting towards good revenue numbers instead of good growth numbers. Enough are going the same way that it feels coordinated even if the decisions are being made independently.

Really sucks, a bunch of individually-manageable tedious problems coming along at once feels like an avalanche.

[Phileosopher → anigbrowl]

Thank you, that's what I needed. I regularly update content to a list on Big Tech's unique perturbations[0], but I need to remember Hanlon's Razor.

That harbinger of hardship is also why I've been dialing back my career aspirations. I learned from personal experience around 2010 that rough economies create the following pattern:

1. A significant proportion of highly qualified people with 5 years' experience at [skill] are laid off.

2. They have to settle at seeking roles that require 3 years of [skill].

3. The 3-year experienced [skill] workers have to settle for 1-year roles.

4. Recurse for 1-year roles for no-experience roles.

5. New [skill] workers can't start in the market unless they personally know somebody.

[fargle]

on #5 - you can certainly move your DNS zones to a proper registry/DNS service company for between around $0 and $10-$20 (for all 6) a year. This will let you have complete control of MX and all other records, and you can still use whatever site hosting providers you like. i feel like the cost of a standalone DNS service small negligible compared to the name fee itself and it's an easy and beneficial one to unbundle from everything else.

as to the rest - just because you are right about it doesn't make you not paranoid

[comprev]

"Just because you are not paranoid it does not mean they are not after you"

:-)

[genjii931]

Not sure about most of that, but try Dreamhost.

[Phileosopher → genjii931]

I was able to find someone else called Accu Web Hosting, which is the same longstanding-but-boring experience that'll keep me going.

Also, look into nearlyfreespeech.net. I believe it's understated in HN, and has a business model that needs more imitation in the startup community.

[clubm8 → genjii931]

> Not sure about most of that, but try Dreamhost.

i cancelled my dreamhost acount after over a decade, they were good when you wanted to keep your stuff out of Google AND Microsoft's grubby paws, but they tolerated some really dark shit on their servers.

i'd rather scam free hot water off the barista to put my tea bags in than continue to stan folks who fronted they were allies but never actually helped me out of precarity like I did so many of their customers.

if you're not looking to use wordpress, which is terrible and constantly turned into a free fire zone by script kiddies, there are better hosting services.

what OP needs is to figure out how much bandwith etc they need and pay for it, the buffet model of web hosting is as dead as bob saget.

[clubm8]

> CardDAV server support has effectively been deprecated, making it difficult to synchronize contacts. My new hosting provider doesn't seem to host CardDAV

Have you considered a notebook?

>In general, I've been maintaining a few WordPress-native sites since about 2018

Wordpress has a lot of vulns and needs updated reguarly, have you considered using a static site? there are frameworks that generate stativc sites

>I had had an email list, but apparently sending via SMTP is no longer natively run through the CRM anymore without a paid service or self-hosting?

How did you have an email list if you only have about five people coming to you a day?

>I'm not presently getting paid to do what I love (i.e., not paid to do tech work), so I'd like some perspective.

I don't love tech, I chanced down a very weird path due to being the sysadmin to abusive parents who eventually developed cognitive issues because they spike their glucose like a football.

it sounds like you use a lot of resources and want to pay the bare minimum, but aren't exactly a thought leader -- is there something you bring to the table you aren't mentioning, like being an underground comedian, a poet, an "influences" in that more organic way?

if not, it might be less about walled gardens and more about you're not good for business - you use a lot, pay a little, and don't have the connections to justify it.

(just my two cents, as i do my morning email and restrain the urge to curse out loud at the browser warnings one gets when you try to do everything over onionland and your enemies want to track you across the web)

[Phileosopher → clubm8]

I've been seeing WP's failings more and more, especially as Gutenberg keeps adding kitchen sink features to stay cool and trendy. The static site builder is on my todo list.

The email list was a plugin on WordPress. I had to grieve the loss, but I'm better now from it. Anyone who cares enough can get an RSS reader, which I've realized advances my techno-political values on software freedom.

I'm happy to pay more for web hosting, and that's basically what I did when I migrated. It's not that I'm over-using resources.

I didn't start in web development, and have only adopted paying for on-rails hosting as a reluctant desire to meet my essay-making purposes.

As far as being a "thought leader" in any sense of the word, I'm really not important: just an essay hobbyist with lots of static content. 2-4 of those essays are controversial, but most of them are useful-but-nonconfrontational crap like how to cook well or how to navigate bureaucracy.

In some ways, I represent the ideal shared hosting customer: Very little web exposure, minimal-to-little SEO, paying customer.

My opinion is that it was likely a confluence of factors that piled up at once. It's not uncommon for things to work steadily, until they don't. I'm clinging hard to Hanlon's Razor on this one.