Change Is A Good Thing, Right?

Okay... so I got my website from 1and1.com back in 2006.  I read HTML For Dummies, spent a few weeks experomenting and fine-tuning, and created a primitive website... which hasn't changed all that much in the last twelve and a half years.

I didn't change, but my host did.  1and1 got bought/absorbed/merged with Ionos, a German company.  Not sure, but I think 1and1 might have been German, too.  Anyhoo, the cost of owning just the website name increased by 100%; and in a two-step process, the hosting fees for actually storing and displaying the site content increased by 150%.  There were no new features added... instead, my trouble report page disappeared when the new owners decided not to support 'web objects' any longer.  So, less functionality, and the site that cost $82 a year when I was keeping the proceeds for myself costs $200 now that I'm giving every penny I earn fixing computers to a dog rescue...

No, Thanks.  Pretty sure I can do better.  I'm turning off the auto-renewal for the name and the hosting; when the current hosting contract comes up for renewal in May, I'll abandon the site.  They can keep the last six months of the name registration.  I believe my simple site will run from within my blog; I'll do some testing, find out for sure before May.

[addendum:  turns out the new hosting bill was for a year, not the six-month period they used to bill for.  So... the rate hasn't increased as much as I thought it had, but I'll still look at moving, just because there's no good reason to pay for what you might could get for free. Am_I_Right?]

Software Recommendation

I stumbled across this source of free multimedia software: DVDVideoSoft, from Digital Wave LTD, in Great Britain.  There are 29 different free Windows apps, each with one or two simple functions.  This approach means the apps can be 25-50% smaller, and that means they load faster.

https://www.dvdvideosoft.com/

Don't get me wrong: I still love the multimedia apps from Anysoft... I go back and forth between apps from the two companies. I'm just offering alternatives here. The individual apps can be downloaded here:
https://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software-download.htm

Digital Wave has created a sort of a packaging app called Free Studio that serves as a shell for the 22 apps they think you will use most often. It's available here:
https://www.dvdvideosoft.com/download.htm?fname=FreeStudio.exe&ls=

Some of the apps load automatically, already included in Free Studio. The rest are grouped by category under five headers; clicking on an app that isn't already loaded will start the download and install process for adding it to the studio app.

[after I wrote this post, I tried using one or two of the utilities again.  They're great... but crippled.  To encourage you to buy, the download speed is throttled back to a crawl; you can get useful speed only by buying a license.  As of the day I'm writing this, Thanksgiving Day 2018, there's a sale going on:  ALL of the utilities they offer for a blanket fee of $29 for a year, or $39 for a lifetime site license.  I'm the first to agree that's a bargain basement price, but I'm much too cheap to pay a license fee for a program I can replace elsewhere for free.  Think I'll stick with Anysoft, but I'll leave this post up for anyone who might not be as frugal as I am.]