Why have I got a web site?

You might already know that I have my own web site http://www.jim-easterbrook.me.uk/. It's a modest affair and I don't updated it very often - the last change to the main page was in November 2015.

Recently my web hosting provider withdrew the "lite" package I was using and migrated me to another package, at more than four times the price! This has prompted me to ask myself why I have a web site. It started off as somewhere to put various things I wanted to share with other people. Some photographs, some articles on hobbies, e.g. various upgrades I'd made to my astronomy gear, and odds and ends that I wanted to publish.

At first I used web space provided by my ISP (internet service provider), but every time I moved to another ISP the web site address would change. This prompted me to get my own domain name (jim-easterbrook.me.uk) giving me a permanent web site and email address. Having my own email address is very useful (apart from the people who don't recognise ".me.uk" and insist on changing it when they write it down) but how useful is it to have my own web site? Does anyone ever look at it?

I'm increasingly using other web sites for specific areas of interest. All my open source software projects are on GitHub - it's an obvious place for anyone looking for open source software to find them. (I'd previously used Google Code, but Google killed that after a few years.) I put photographs on flickr - it's a well known photo sharing site so maybe that's where people will go to find photographs. (I used to use Google Picasa, but Google killed that after a few years.) Flickr is getting more expensive, and its quality of service is declining, so I don't know how long I'll carry on using it.

My blog is here, on "Blogger" - who knows how long it will be before Google kills this site as well? Should I add a blog to my own web site? Blogger is free, but that means I'm not the customer, I'm the product.

One final complication is that I also maintain a web site for my partner, who is a singer and singing teacher. She doesn't get much business through the web site, but would it be a problem if I got rid of it? (It's hosted as part of the same package as my site.)

So many questions, so few answers.