I've had a hobby website of some sort since around 2002, starting with a Geocities site that I would use to publish wantlists while I was a member of the Old Card Traders group. A few years ago Geocities shut down and I was forced to find new website hosting. My search led me to webs.com, which worked well for me for years.
Recently I read a discussion over at freedomcardboard.com about personal collection websites, which led me to check out weebly.com. With it's nice webpage design tools and virtually unlimited bandwidth, I decided to revamp my website and move it to Weebly. My goal was to create a more generic hobby site rather than have a player collection-focused site. This would leave me with room to grow as I hope to expand my collecting in the future.
I chose Weebly for a number of reasons. It was very well spoken of by users in the previously-mentioned hobby forum, and upon trying it out I found it to be a easier to use, with fewer restrictions than other free hosting sites. Most notable is the virtually unlimited bandwidth, which ought eliminate the need for a separate picture-hosting site. Also the mobile app, while not allowing actual site editing, does allow users to monitor site statistics and create/edit a blog. It's the latter feature that I hope to use a lot. I had a blog on my previous website but didn't make much use of it. With the ability to blog via my smartphone, I hope to share more hobby discussion and maybe share some pack breaks and maildays.
Currently my hobby site covers my player collections for John Olerud and J.P. Arencibia. I hope to eventually get fully back into two other aspects of collecting that had to be put on the back burner due other financial and time commitments. They are Toronto Blue Jays team sets and Topps baseball base sets. Some day I might even decide to pay for a domain name so I can have my very own .com or .ca website with all the features that might go along with it.
I'm planning for an April 1, 2014 "official go date" for Cardboard Corner to fully replace my old website, though the website has been online since Summer 2013. I still have some of my Olerud checklist to update, a ton of Gallery pictures to upload (this will be an going project), plus some formatting to do.
I hope you enjoy this fresh start for my hobby website! Your comments are welcome so please post here or use the "Contact Me" link.
Happy collecting!