I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I’m moving to another blog and another blog host. Starting tomorrow—the first day of a new month—I will blog here. The WordPress blog you’re now reading, which is hosted by BlueHost, will remain online (I’m paid through 20 December), but no new posts will appear after today. Why the move? As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been getting a gray screen (“This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota”) more and more often when I attempt to post something on my blog. Mark Spahn got the same gray screen, so I know it’s not just me. It infuriates me that there are times when my blog is inaccessible. What the hell am I paying for? I want a blog that’s accessible every second of every day.

As for why the gray screen appears, I don’t know. I’ve been in communication with BlueHost technicians many times, both by e-mail and by telephone. They say that my archive is too big and that certain queries are taking a long time. I had no idea what “queries” meant in this context, but a technician told me today that whenever a spammer tries to post a comment on my blog, it slows everything down. I told him that I never allow spam comments to appear. Each day, I delete a handful of spam comments when I go to my blog for the first time. It doesn’t matter, he said; the mere attempt to post spam, even if it never appears on my blog, slows things down.

That did it. I want to allow readers to comment, but if I do, I risk making the blog inaccessible. You would think that there’s a simple solution to this problem, but no technician suggested one. WordPress is no help. I don’t think I’ve ever been in touch with anyone from WordPress. I don’t pay anything for the blog and therefore can’t complain about it when things go wrong. As for BlueHost, it’s a hosting company, not a blog company. The BlueHost technicians have bent over backward to help me, so far as I can tell.

It’s time to move. I should have no trouble with spam comments on TypePad, and there are technicians available 24 hours a day to help me. I’ve already had many of my questions answered. I signed up for premium service, which is $299.50 per year. That’s $24.95 per month, which, to me, is nothing. I love blogging. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience of having to reset your bookmarks, shortcuts, or favorites, as well as for having to learn a new system of posting comments. Keep telling yourself that change is good!

Addendum: Shortly before composing this post, I turned off the comment function. That should prevent spammers from slowing things down. Alas, it will also keep you from posting comments. When you go to the new blog tomorrow, you should be able to figure out how to post comments. Someone please let me know whether there’s an anti-spam mechanism in place, e.g., one of those boxes with skewed letters that must be typed in. Please remember my policy of requiring full names. Only my friend Peg gets to use her first name. That is because she is an exceptional person.

Addendum 2: I’m not the only one having CPU problems, evidently. Maybe BlueHost isn’t so innocent, after all.