The thought came to me to start this site due to the Coronavirus disease sweeping the world and the subsequent UK lockdown which came into place at the end of March 2020. I, like many others, found that I had more time on my hands due to only being allowed out to get essential supplies (such as food) and limited daily exercise. I am using my computer more and thought it may be useful to record things if I find them useful. It will also be a kind of diary for what I was doing in these strangest of times.

I do have some programming knowledge but have never attempted a blog type site before. So I decided to go along with the majority (I believe) and create a WordPress site. I found https://wordpress.com/hosting/ where I could set up a free site and played around there and got a site up (which still exists so I can carry out experiments there if needed). One limitation (with the free tier) I quickly came across (as far as I could see) is that I could not install any plugins and I specifically wanted a way to format code snippets.

I had a look around and decided on https://www.hostinger.co.uk/ and paid for their (shared) Premium package. I decided to go for broke and went for the longest term (48 months) & set up my domain name memorybug.net.

So my advice, if you are completely new to blogging, is to set up a free site on wordpress.com and see how you get on. You can always upgrade to one of their paid tiers if you want or check out the various other providers. I would be wary of trying to transfer your existing free site to a different provider. Of course it can be done but I think that would add an extra level of complexity if you, like me, are just starting. I recommend setting up a few pages on your free site & finding your way around then decide what your next hosting step will be. Of course, the free tier may be perfectly adequate for what you want to achieve,

I want to say that I have absolutely no affiliations with Hostinger and you may well find a more suitable provider when you make enquiries. My choice could end up being poor but so far so good!