After a long hiatus, I am back. I have given up Ababa as my web host. That was expected - Ababa was just a stop-gap arrangment. I always intended to move to a full-featured, true-blue, heavy-duty web host. Which begs the question - why the heck am I using Google?! The short answer to that is: time. I just don't have the time to maintain a full fledged website.
Also, I was hopping mad about my website not finding its way to Google's search results. Some two months after setting up the website, searching for chetancrasta brings up absolutely nothing. My egoistic mind refuses to accept that it is because no one would ever do a google search of chetancrasta. It has to be because I was using domain forwarding. Well, that's fixed now - I am using "Google Apps for Your Domain" to host my website. Hah! There is no way they can keep my site out of their own search engine. Which brings me to my next topic.
Google Apps for Your Domain
I stumbled upon this by accident, I was reading Gmail's help pages when right down on the page I saw the link. The name was wierd enough for me to want to click it. I have no clue of when this service was started. It is a natural extension of Google's Googlepages webhosting (subdomain).
The only thing that rankles is the lack of direct HTML editing. I have to use Google's Page Manager to create and edit each web page. I am hoping there will be the option to create your own templates. That would be the icing on the cake. Google also gives me 25 email addresses (at my domain). And needless to say, all this is free.
In the next few days I will see if I can upload my own html files. I will then post a small write up of that. Heck, if all this actually works like it is supposed to, I might post something everyday! Now, that would be really something!
Chetan Crasta