Good news for RPG Knights

Hey everyone!  I am hopping on to do a short update about the site that Is some good news.  In July last year I reported that the site was eventually going to be closed due to a conflict with my website host provider.  You can revisit that post here if you would like to see all the seedy details.  The site was due for renewal in early July this year and I was sadly expecting to let it fade into obscurity.  It certainly has had an effect on the amount I post.

A week ago I started doing some research into self hosting.  I was considering hosting myself or transferring my site to the Google cloud in an effort to save it.  After all, most of my reason for having the site is to remain in contact with those that I used to talk daily with on Google Plus.  There was a fair bit of technical know how I was going to have to acquire to get it done this way but it was on my radar.  I was certainly going to investigate this further.  If I could get it cost neutral (ads pay for the hosting) then it was worth pursuing and Google Cloud certainly seemed to suggest that I could do it that way.

This morning my wife was going through our bank statement online and found a charge that occurred overnight from a Hostpapa.  That is my current web provider.  I sighed, because I was not expecting a charge from them and said that I would investigate it.  On getting into my account the charge (a significant amount) was for my Wildcard SSL certificate (it keeps you all safe and secure while on the site).  Not much I could do about that.  But there had been some time with no communication between us (myself and the hosts) and my ire was on a low burn.  Their issue with my site is it attracts too many hits (bots trying to index the pages on here is a large hit) and I am on a legacy plan from 2013 or something similar.  They want me on a pro-business plan so I have a dedicated server and do not degrade the service.

Well, in my poking I found that there was a business plan on special.  A very good special in fact that was way less than my legacy plan.  But I thought it may be a plan they only offered to newcomers so I contacted support about it.  I was correct and the plans are aimed at newcomers, but the support technician was reasonable and said that it would be like an upgrade and they would certainly be happy for me to take on that plan at that price.  Then he also took it one step further, as they have a premium business plan that was out of my price range.  He advised that they had a special on that on Valentines day that made it in my price range and only marginally more than the plan I was looking at.  It comes with the Wildcard SSL as standard to the plan.  They would credit the amount that I had paid overnight to the plan and give me the special rate for 3 years.

So for an additional amount less than the yearly price of the Wildcard SSL I am now signed up for three years from today on their premium plan.  That means that RPG Knights, the blog, is going nowhere anytime soon.  It may even encourage me to come back to writing regular blogs!  It also brings to a close a good deal of grief over the loss of this site for me!  So hopefully this news has brightened some of your days.  I have a post in the making and it will likely be out soon so I hope some of you come back to read some actual role playing game blogs!