Reducing overhead...

Recently I've been in the process of making my life easier, meaning that I've been looking at the custom code and applications I have on my domain, cmehil.com, and deciding what is good, what is not, what is too much overhead and what I need and don't need.

It boiled down to my video library (have a habit of buying too many DVD's), my installation of EyeOS, which the family was not using, the family tree, my stats, 4 blogs, MySQL DB's and a few other things. Not to mention the hosting costs, license costs, etc.

Now in the past week (being laid up with a thrown out back - or worse too soon to tell) I've eliminated 2 blogs by merging them into another one, removed EyeOS (cool program too!) and found an online free alternative to the Family Tree called fto24.com with better features, control, more input and the ability to purchase stuff based on your family info!

I also started using feedburner.com new "site stats" to see if I get the info I want.

Now my host costs me around $30 every quarter, the stats had a fixed cost of $30 per site not to mention the overhead and time for me to maintain all of the custom apps, updates and code alternations.

So right now I'm in test and migration mode, the family tree is all up to date expect for photos and now (few complained) is only open to those in the list but it's worth the features it has! down to 2 blogs being this one and the "family" one which is about me, the wife and son here in Germany and my video library.

For the video library I decided to go with Zoho Creator, and I modified an existing "Book library" I had to be for my videos. Once the Creator API comes out I can create the script to auto update by grepping IMDB I think ;-)

So the video library which can be found here, is very cool and with their text field (multi-line) I was able to migrate many of the reviews I did on my old movie blog to the database itself - keeping the HTML in tact. Plus with the new cross form data manipulation they added in I was able to maintain my "lending management" side of things. I still need to make a copy of the application public so anyone can make a copy of it as well as with the enhanced Book library.

Now once I finish moving the photos to the new family tree (331 entries and 241 photos), and the movie description over to the new video library I can remove both of those from my host, now if the new feedburner.com site stats works out as well if not better than the one I currently use I can remove that as well (a wash on $30 bucks) this then basically leaves me with the overhead of 2 blogs to maintain. Ah but Google has a solution for me, which I've signed up for and once I get things all moved over I will transfer my domain name over to Google hosting and will then be able to use the Google start page, web page creator, talk, mail, calendar, etc for my domain specifically instead of what I have now. Since I don't need the PHP, MySQL, etc. anymore (or won't once I have things migrated) resulting in me saving the $120 or dollars each year in domain hosting. Ah the blogs, but of course the blogs what do I do with them as I don't want to loose my readers by moving the links to "blogspot.com" instead I will use the new feature from Blogger for "custom domain". I've been checking and it supports sub domains so I won't loose a thing and I've already migrated the "family blog" over just not activated it and using their new layout controls life just got easier and more refined as I don't need to maintain all the custom template code like I used to - options reduced in terms of the templates available but the new one I chose for the "family blog" looks good and the one for this one needs an update anyway.

It's nice to be able to save money going into 2007, even with my online web apps I use, I just canceled my account for the file server, found out of the 6 GB of files hosted (requiring me to pay the $90 a year) 4 GB are photos (my flickr page is being updated) 1 GB are word docs, xls docs, etc. which are being pumped into Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet or removed as they are worthless now, leaving 1 GB (a bit more) of videos most of which are either already on my video blog, or on jumpcut.com the others will be going up onto jumpcut.com in the coming weeks.

Now that is a yearly cost of $225 or dollars cut down to $25 (flickr.com pro account) and the rest of the services I will use or already am using cost me nothing but ads being plastered everywhere which some of those I do click. Now speaking of ads I don't have many, but those I do have, have earned me $25 dollars from Amazon, and around $30 dollars from Google which I am happy with as that pays for part of what I spend now on hosting and services and once my migration is over if that continues will pay for flickr pro account which will make me very happy. I refuse to do more ads though what I have I think is too much as it is.

So my last remaining thought on this whole migration is whether I should pay the $4.99 a month for the "pro" account with feedburner.com for a absolute complete view of what people are doing here? The question to all of you - what are you doing for your hosting needs, what's your overhead and how much are you giving out?

Technorati tags: Zoho, Zoho Creator, Videos, Library, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Writer, Feedburner, Jumpcut, fto24, flickr, Office 2.0, EyeOS, Google