#AI-powered hosting

[infoanalysishub]

AI-Assisted Managed WordPress Hosting for E-commerce

Discover the power of AI-assisted managed WordPress hosting for e-commerce. Learn about features, benefits, use cases, and how AI optimizes performance, security, SEO, and automation for WooCommerce stores. ✅ New AI-Assisted Managed WordPress Hosting for E-commerce: Complete Guide The landscape of e-commerce is rapidly evolving, and so are the technologies supporting it. One of the most…

[goldensakuma]

『可愛い目してるね〜 ♡』

+bonus giggly Raul bc he's just too adorable!! (≧◡≦)🤍🧡

[atcuality1]

WordPress Security Services Tailored to Your Business Needs

Atcuality understands that every WordPress website has unique security needs. Our specialized WordPress security services provide customized solutions to safeguard your website from malicious attacks, unauthorized access, and technical vulnerabilities. Whether you own a blog, corporate website, or online store, our comprehensive approach includes malware scanning, vulnerability patching, firewall implementation, and site backups. Atcuality’s team of security professionals works tirelessly to monitor and eliminate threats before they can impact your business. With advanced tools and strategies like SSL encryption and uptime monitoring, we ensure your website operates securely while maintaining peak performance. Cyber threats evolve daily, but with Atcuality, you can stay one step ahead. Don’t let your website become a target—secure your site and maintain customer trust with our proven WordPress security solutions.

[luulapants]

If anyone has taken their eyes off what's happening to federal workers in the US right now, here's some highlights that we're hearing from our comrades across the government who have not yet been fired:

In one building (hosting multiple agencies), the locks on the bathroom were changed so employees no longer have any access to a bathroom during the workday. People are peeing in trash cans.

Elsewhere, multiple agencies have reported that hand soap is no longer being supplied in the bathrooms.

Toilet paper supplies have not been adjusted to meet the needs of a vastly increased number of in-office employees.

Employee-owned coffee and coffee makers have been stolen or thrown away without notice (it was already illegal for taxpayer dollars to be spent on supplying federal employees with amenities like coffee, so many offices have coffee supplied by pooled employee funds).

Meanwhile, many offices don't even have potable drinking water (recurrent legionella outbreaks), so employees have to bring their own water from home.

Despite an explosion in the number of workers in offices, cleaning budgets have been slashed and many offices are not being cleaned regularly enough to remain sanitary. Pests like roaches and rats are a problem.

The firings continue, legal and illegal. Entire programs are being cut. Managers have no idea when they might lose staff. Employees are getting fired at 6pm on a weekend or finding out when they're unable to log into their computer or when they receive a shipping label in the mail to return their equipment.

Through all of this, the DOGE employees in federal workplaces are enjoying incredible and expensive luxury: AI-powered sleep pods, entire dormitories so they can live in federal buildings, nurseries for their children on site, free food and beverages, laundry services, and who knows what else. They have special security to restrict access to their areas of the buildings, including armed guards.

And I'm not just saying this to lament how bad it is for federal workers. I'm saying this because, as workers are reporting this to one another, the response is, inevitably: "This is illegal." "Yes, but who would I report it to? OPM? They're a DOGE puppet. OSHA? They've cut OSHA. The Inspectors General? Cut. The NLRB? Cut. My union? No longer recognized."

There is no one left to enforce these laws, so taking away access to basic sanitation is now effectively legal. They are doing this to federal workers, who historically have been some of the best-protected workers in the country. They are doing this specifically because it demonstrates to the public sector that it is now legal to do these things to their own workers.

[growing-business-blogs]

Enhancing Customer Experience with Cloud Solutions

In today’s competitive business landscape, enhancing customer experience is paramount. Cloud solutions have emerged as a pivotal technology in this arena, offering numerous benefits that help businesses improve customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and drive growth. This blog explores how leveraging cloud solutions can transform customer experience, making it more personalized, efficient, and responsive.

Personalized Customer Interactions

Cloud solutions enable businesses to gather and analyze vast amounts of customer data, providing insights that can be used to personalize interactions. By leveraging cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, companies can track customer preferences, purchase history, and behavior patterns. This data-driven approach allows for tailored recommendations and personalized communication, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Example : E-commerce platforms use cloud-based analytics to suggest products based on a customer’s browsing and purchase history, creating a personalized shopping experience.

Improved Accessibility and Convenience

Cloud solutions offer enhanced accessibility, allowing customers to interact with businesses anytime, anywhere. Whether through cloud-based mobile apps or responsive web platforms, customers can access services and support at their convenience. This round-the-clock availability significantly improves customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Faster Response Times and Better Support

With cloud solutions, businesses can improve their response times and offer better support to their customers. Cloud-based customer service platforms enable support teams to access customer information quickly, collaborate in real-time, and resolve issues efficiently. Additionally, the use of AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, hosted on the cloud, ensures that customers receive instant responses to their queries.

Example: Telecommunications companies use cloud-based customer service platforms to manage support tickets and provide quick resolutions, reducing wait times and enhancing customer satisfaction.

Enhanced Collaboration and Communication

Cloud solutions facilitate better collaboration and communication both within the business and with customers. By using cloud-based collaboration tools, teams can work together seamlessly, share information, and coordinate efforts to improve customer service. This collaborative approach ensures that customer issues are addressed promptly and effectively.

Example: Healthcare providers use cloud-based platforms to share patient information across departments, ensuring coordinated care and better patient outcomes.

Scalability and Flexibility

Cloud solutions offer scalability and flexibility, allowing businesses to adapt to changing customer demands quickly. Whether it’s scaling up resources during peak times or deploying new features and services, the cloud provides the infrastructure needed to meet customer expectations without significant delays.

Example: Retailers use cloud solutions to handle increased traffic during holiday seasons, ensuring that their e-commerce platforms remain responsive and efficient.

Data Security and Privacy

Ensuring data security and privacy is crucial for maintaining customer trust. Cloud service providers offer advanced security measures, including encryption, regular security updates, and compliance with industry standards, to protect sensitive customer information. This enhances customer confidence and fosters long-term relationships.

Example: Financial institutions rely on cloud providers that comply with stringent regulatory standards to protect customer data and ensure privacy.

Leveraging cloud solutions is a strategic move for businesses aiming to enhance their customer experience. From personalized interactions and improved accessibility to faster support and robust security, the benefits of cloud technology are manifold. By integrating cloud solutions into their operations, businesses can not only meet but exceed customer expectations, driving satisfaction, loyalty, and growth.Their Private Cloud solutions offer a combination of the security and control of single-tenancy cloud environment that you need for mission-critical systems while also delivering the economic viability and resiliency of public cloud. Their Private Cloud solutions are designed to meet the needs of different enterprise workloads, such as core banking, ERP, AI/ML, and Big Data, to name a few. For more insights on how cloud solutions can transform your business, Please visit here www.zeacloud.com.

[wilwheaton]

The Trump administration’s decision to publicize something like Alligator Alcatraz is not just a useful weapon that they can now threaten their enemies — and Elon Musk — with. It’s also a distinctly new form of propaganda. Something they seem to have picked up from the video tours of Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in El Salvador. The concentration camp reimagined as a hype house. A place to make content, both real and AI-generated, that glorifies the power of the state. What Democratic super-poster Will Stancil described this week as “pornography for Trump's sadistic base.” But also content that desensitizes you. That normalizes state violence and, most importantly, turns it into a meme. Trump’s administration knows that most effective propaganda of the 21st century is viral, ephemeral, and, crucially, stupid. Something CNN hosts can joke about on air, distracted by how idiotic the name is. How goofy the T-shirts are. Completely removed from the human misery happening behind closed doors.

Trump's big, beautiful gulag

This is what Republicans voted for. This is what they wanted. 

Don’t let anyone tell you they didn’t vote for this, they actually voted for [low taxes | strong defense | the party | the price of eggs| some other bullshit], and now they are horrified. They never wanted masked thugs to terrorize and kidnap an innocent mother while her children watch. They never wanted masked vigilantes to terrorize entire communities and beat fathers bloody in front of their families. 

They never wanted any of this, they tell us, and maybe they didn’t want it, but he promised it, and his base held up signs celebrating it. He promised to inflict this terror and this sadistic cruelty on as many people as he could, and that even if they say they didn’t want this to happen, his repeated promises to do exactly this certainly weren’t enough to stop them from voting for him.

So many people who voted for him like to pretend that they aren’t Nazis; it’s the MAGA extremists who are the Nazis. It’s not this guy who lives in the middle-class suburb! This guy goes to church and takes his kids to soccer practice! He was appalled by January 6 (though he’s rewritten almost all of it in his head into something less violent). He doesn’t support those MAGA people; in fact, he’s embarrassed by them!

Deep breath. Okay. Hey, buddy, I have some news: there is no difference between you and them. You’re just as deplorable, and you do not get to pretend you didn’t vote for this like they did. You may dress nice and check all the “good neighbor” boxes, just like a lot of Germans did in the 1930s, but you don’t fool me.

Whatever justification you invented to feel good about what you did, doesn’t matter. It’s the result of your vote that matters, and you voted for terror, suffering, and incompetent malevolence aimed at the heart of our Constitution.

I will never forget this. I will never forgive you for the suffering you enabled. 

[jcmarchi]

BlueHost Review – The Best WordPress Host Yet?

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/bluehost-review-the-best-wordpress-host-yet/

BlueHost Review – The Best WordPress Host Yet?

If only one web host had the bragging rights for being the best WordPress host on the market, it’d be BlueHost. Whether you are a webmaster or are looking to migrate your existing website to a new provider, you have definitely heard of BlueHost. 

Many of the websites I have managed including my personal ones have been hosted on BlueHost and I will share my personal thoughts on my experience with them. 

In the rest of this BlueHost review, we’ll go in-depth into the core features you get with the host’s plans, how affordable their packages are, how easy it is to use their platform for your website’s management, how responsive their support is – all the good stuff!

So if you are considering BlueHost, this is the only guide you’ll need.

BlueHost Review – The Host’s History

BlueHost is just a little over 2 decades old and was found in 2003. Since then, the company has grown into an empire currently powering over 2 million domains around the globe. BlueHost has impressive accolades to their name – they are the longest running number 1 WordPress.org recommended host. Their hosting plans are WordPress-heavy with everything you need to create, manage, and promote your website.

The host provides a variety of hosting packages – shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting. BlueHost also provides emails, a domain registration engine, and marketing tools and services that you can pay for as addons. On every hosting package you go for on BlueHost, you get a free SSL, free domain name registration, access to live chat with their agents, free CDN and free WP themes. Aside from their most basic shared plan, you also get Malware Scanning and daily backups to powerful SSD drives.

BlueHost caches customer websites across a network of servers in 6 locations around the world. Nearly 13,000 people have reviewed BlueHost on TrustPilot and they score a pretty impressive 4.1.

BlueHost Pros and Cons

BlueHost is recommended directly by WordPress

They provide hosting plans for every website need

Their plans are pretty affordable

Website essentials are provided for free

They have vast complementary services

BlueHost is incredibly easy to use for beginners

Excellent uptime

Their servers get slow sometimes

Not privately owned

Many out-of-the-box addons are only free for the first year

BlueHost Rating – How I Score The Host

We’ve discussed BlueHost’s rating on TrustPilot. However, what’s my personal take? Considering the host’s prices, features, real-life performance, user friendliness, customer support convenience, how will I rate each core consideration on a scale of 1-5. It makes sense to actually take a dive into some of the host’s core features and see how well they score. 

And if you think about it, given that there are thousands of hosting providers on the market, having a ‘standardized’ rating of each host enables you to compare different providers fairly. 

So if you want a simple outline out all that BlueHost has to offer and how I’ll score them, let’s take a look. Note that these scores are based on my personal opinion and experience with the host and may change as the host improves on their offerings:

Quality My rating Why I gave this score Features and specs 5.0 Virtually every kind of hosting, free SSL, domain, email, CDN & WP themes, and third-party marketing tools built-in make BlueHost an absolute beast.  Pricing 4.8 With BlueHost’s shared plans starting at $2.95/month, the host is really affordable. However, I’d give them a 4.8 because, after the first year, the subscription prices quadruple. Performance stats  4.7 BlueHost is known for their 100% uptime guarantee. With each of their plans providing SSD storage, you are also guaranteed high-speed website data delivery. However, after several speeds, the average server response time was around 400 ms which is great but not the fastest. Ease of use 4.9 BlueHost uses the modern cPanel for your website’s backend and a visually appealing design on the frontend that’s also incredibly intuitive for even hosting newbies. However, many hosts also now offer custom control panels that are even easier to use than cPanel. Customer support guarantee 5.0 BlueHost offers an excellent customer support guarantee – you can reach their agents via phone and live chat, and you can learn how to use their products as well as other WordPress specific answers on their Academy page, knowledgebase, and blog.

BlueHost Hosting Plans & Pricing – 2024

BlueHost offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and cloud hosting for WordPress. For every plan you subscribe to, you are protected by a 30-day money back guarantee to give you enough time to decide if it meets your need

And when you decide to commit to a particular plan, BlueHost accepts payment via card – Visa, Mastercard, DISCOVER, American Express – and Paypal. 

BlueHost’s shared hosting plans

BASIC

Storage space – 10 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 1 website

Features – Free CDN, SSL, domain, and email, custom WP themes

Price – $2.95/month

CHOICE PLUS

Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 3 websites

Features – Everything in BASIC plus daily backups, domain privacy, malware scans

Price – $5.45/month

ONLINE STORE

Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 3 websites

Features – CHOICE PLUS plus eCommerce specific features

Price – $9.95/month 

CLOUD

Storage space – 225 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 50 websites

Features – Unmetered bandwidth, priority support, WAF, caching, DDoS protection

Price – $29.99/month

BlueHost recommends their CHOICE PLUS shared hosting plan for new customers. You can host 3 websites with 40 GB of SSD storage, charged at $5.45/month for the first year.

Who this is for:

BlueHost’s shared hosting plans are best suited for new websites that are not yet pulling in a lot of traffic. New websites or websites that are only meant to serve content to a few target personas fit this bill nicely – think portfolio websites, parked pages, landing pages, etc. However, BlueHost actually integrates a cloud plan CLOUD to allow upgrade seamlessly should your resource demand increase.

BlueHost’s VPS hosting plans

STANDARD

Memory – 2GB RAM

Number of CPUs – 2 core CPU

Bandwidth – Unmetered bandwidth

Price – $31.99/month

ENHANCED

Memory – 4GB RAM

Number of CPUs – 2 core CPU

Bandwidth – Unmetered bandwidth

Price – $41.99/month

ULTIMATE

Memory – 8GB RAM

Number of CPUs – 4 core CPU

Bandwidth – Unmetered bandwidth

Price – $71.99/month

As usual, BlueHost recommends their intermediate ENHANCED VPS hosting plan to webmasters. For just $10/month extra on their STANDARD plan, you get double the RAM and 45 GB of extra storage.

Who needs BlueHost’s VPS hosting?

BlueHost’s VPS plans are excellent for you if your website is growing and you are maxing out your shared resources. VPS hosting gives you more resources and also gives you a dedicated virtual engine, even though you are still sharing the same physical server with other websites. VPS hosting plans are great for blog websites, growing eCommerce stores, and websites that handle sensitive user data. 

BlueHost’s cloud hosting plans

CLOUD 1

Number of websites – 1 website

Storage space – 10 GB SSD storage

Computing power – 2vCPU computing power

Price – $29.99/month

CLOUD 10

Number of websites – 10 websites

Storage space – 125 GB SSD storage 

Computing power – 20vCPU computing power

Price – $49.99/month

CLOUD 25

Number of websites – 25 websites

Storage space – 175 GB SSD storage

Computing power – 75vCPU computing power

Price – $89.99/month

CLOUD 50

Number of websites – 50 websites

Storage space – 225 GB SSD storage

Computing power – 150vCPU computing power

Price – $109.99/month

Who needs BlueHost’s cloud hosting plans?

Fun fact: BlueHost just launched their cloud hosting plans!

BlueHost’s cloud hosting plans cater to websites that experience sudden spikes in traffic and need resources on demand. Like the idea of paying for only the resources you use? Then these plans are for you. Ecommerce websites selling seasonal products and web apps find cloud hosting plans invaluable.

BlueHost’s dedicated hosting plans

STANDARD

Cores/thread – 4 cores/8 threads

Memory – 8GB RAM

Storage – 1 Terabyte HDD storage

Price – $91.98/month

ENHANCED

Cores/thread – 8 cores/16 threads

Memory – 16 GB RAM

Storage – 2 Terabyte HDD storage

Price – $121.88/month

PREMIUM

Cores/thread – 8 cores/ 16 threads

Memory – 30 GB RAM

Storage – 2 Terabyte HDD storage

Price – $141.99/month

BlueHost recommends their intermediate ENHANCED dedicated hosting plan. A dedicated server with 16 GB of RAM, 2 Terabytes of storage, and unmetered bandwidth, for $121.88/month. 

Who is BlueHost’s dedicated hosting for?

BlueHost’s dedicated hosting plans give you a whole server to yourself. All of the server’s resources – storage, bandwidth, storage, memory – are yours. BlueHost’s dedicated hosting plans make the most sense if your website receives tons of traffic and you need the most security – your website doesn’t share these resources with any other website. 

You can choose a managed dedicated hosting plan or if you have an IT team that can manage your dedicated servers, you can request complete control over your website’s servers.

BlueHost’s WordPress hosting plans

BASIC

Storage space – 10 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 1 website

Features – Free CDN, SSL, domain, and email, custom WP themes

Price – $2.95/month

CHOICE PLUS

Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 3 websites

Features – Everything in BASIC plus daily backups, domain privacy, malware scans

Price – $5.45/month

ONLINE STORE

Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 3 websites

Features – CHOICE PLUS plus eCommerce specific features

Price – $9.95/month 

CLOUD

Storage space – 225 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 50 websites

Features – Unmetered bandwidth, priority support, WAF, caching, DDoS protection

Price – $29.99/month

BlueHost’s WordPress plans exactly mirror their shared hosting plans albeit with WordPress-heavy features optimized to accelerate creating and managing your WordPress website. They recommend their CHOICE PLUS plan that accommodates 3 websites, gives you 40 GB of SSD storage, daily backups, and malware scanning.

Who is BlueHost’s WordPress hosting for?

Plan to build your website on WordPress or you currently have one? BlueHost’s plans offer affordable hosting with WordPress essentials for your website. You get custom WordPress themes, the BlueHost WONDERSUITE – an AI-powered website setup stack, WordPress pre-installed, WordPress-tailored support, and so much more!

BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans

ONLINE STORE

Storage – 40 GB SSD storage

Ecommerce features – Store website, analytics, Yoast SEO, YITH integration, daily backups for WordPress and Jetpack, online payments enablement

Price – $9.95/month

ONLINE STORE + MARKETPLACE

Storage – 100 GB storage

Ecommerce features – All in ONLINE STORE plus multi-channel selling through third-party platforms – Ebay, Amazon, eBay, etc.

Price – $12.95/month

BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans are billed annually or triannually. 

Who needs BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans?

BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans build upon their WordPress plans and give you eCommerce functionality. Plan to build an eCommerce store or migrate your store from another platform, then these plans are for you. You can choose the ONLINE STORE if you only plan to use your website as your point of sale. If you plan to harness other Ecommerce platforms, then the ONLINE STORE + MARKETPLACE is just the one for you.

BlueHost’s Features

Let’s take an overarching overview of the features that BlueHost offers across most of its plans:

SSD storage

Free domain, SSL, WP Themes, and professional email

Free CDN

Unmetered bandwidth

BlueHost WonderSuite website builder

1-click WordPress acceleration and WordPress built-in

BlueHost offers most of the features typical of a leading provider, however, they stand out because they are first a WordPress host – their shared hosting plans are actually all WordPress plans.

BlueHost Performance Tests

To test BlueHost’s performance, we will perform real tests on websites hosted by the provider to determine their average server response speed, performance score, and uptime. 

The quicker the server response is, the more quickly any website hosted on them will load whenever a user tries to visit that website. Pages that load under 2 seconds have a bounce rate of 9% but that figure shoots to 38% once the load time is more than 3 seconds.

So it’s incredibly important that you choose a host with very quick server response times as this contributes to your overall website load time. Another important factor to consider is the web host’s uptime or reliability.

The uptime simply measures the amount of time your web host’s servers are running – and in turn, your website is available online. The industry standard for uptime is 99.9%. 

Here were the results of the tests I carried out on BlueHost:

To measure the web host’s server speeds, I considered the time to first byte (TTFB) and after several tests, the average TTFB was 490 ms. This is a decent score but other hosts like SiteGround have more impressive figures.

The overall performance of the website was 99% which is excellent.

To test BlueHost’s uptime, I used Uptime Robot to investigate the website’s availability over the past month:

BlueHost’s servers have a 100% uptime and their websites have been available for the same portion of the time.

BlueHost’s Customer Support

What support portals are available on BlueHost? And how easy would it be to reach an agent when you have inquiries to make or errors to troubleshoot? Let’s see.

BlueHost has a thriving support hub where you can get in touch with their agents 24/7 via:

Phone

BlueHost has phone lines for it sales department, customer support, and international phone lines for customers calling from abroad.

Live chat

I was quite impressed because for many hosts you need to be a paying customer first before you can reach out to their support agents. On BlueHost, you can chat with an agent live to make inquiries about their services or seek support. 

I tested BlueHost’s live chat to see how quickly I would get the help I wanted. When you initiate the chat, you are first attended to by a chatbot that asks for what category the inquiry you want to make falls under:

Next, you are asked to provide your name and are redirected to speak with a human agent. In this test, the agent connected with me in less than 20 seconds which is impressive:

I asked a couple of questions and they seemed very knowledgeable in the technical details about BlueHost’s plans:

Overall, I was satisfied with their live chat support and you’d find it invaluable as a customer.

WordPress Academy

It’s only natural that WordPress’s number 1 host has an academy page dedicated to WordPress tutorials. BlueHost’s academy page has 14 lessons and you can take them for free even without creating an account with BlueHost. You only need to fill in your email address.

Knowledgebase

BlueHost’s search engine enabled knowledgebase contains resources and information on managing your account, email, their different packages, DNS, WordPress, domain names, and so much more.

BlueHost Blog

And finally, the BlueHost blog with informative articles on generic industry topics every website owner will find useful irrespective of your industry.

BlueHost’s Security Features

There are bad actors everywhere, more so online. BlueHost gives you a host of security features out-of-the-box to protect your brand and your website from cyberattacks and malware.

On even the most basic plans, you get a free SSL certificate to give your website the ‘HTTPS’ badge of trust. You also get a free CDN built-in to cache your website content across their network of servers and improve your website performance.

For their higher-tier shared hosting plans, your website is backed up daily to protect your data. BlueHost also gives you access to their built-in malware scanner and domain privacy free for the first year. Domain privacy protects your personal information from being shown publicly on the WHOIS database.

BlueHost’s premium hosting plans also give you DDoS protection and a web application firewall(WAF). You can also buy security software as addons to all your plans on BlueHost including CodeGuard Basic and SiteLock Essentials both billed at $2.99/month each.

BlueHost’s Website Builder – WonderSuite

BlueHost’s website builder, WonderSuite is powered by AI to simplify designing your website. WonderSuite encapsulates several AI-powered products including:

WonderStart

BlueHost’s WonderStart simplifies creating your website by asking you a number of specific questions right from the beginning, instead of having to fill them at each stage.

The AI powered tool then finds the right themes and fills in your details automatically.

WonderTheme

WonderTheme generates website samples based on the business niche, themes and font you choose in WonderStart so you know exactly what your website’s final look will be.

WonderBlocks

WonderBlocks is BlueHost’s drag-n-drop website design interface that allows you customize the themes and webpages in a few clicks. Fill in the content blocks with page essentials like a contact form and photo gallery.

WonderCart

WonderCart is BlueHost’s website design tool for eCommerce websites. With WonderCart, you can customize your eComm website pages and your checkout pages to drive more sales and conversions.

BlueHost’s User-Friendliness

BlueHost is known as one of the easiest web hosts to use, especially for new webmasters. Let’s take a look at how to create an account with the host, what its control panel looks like, and how to setup WordPress on BlueHost:

How to register an account on BlueHost

Like with any other host, to register an account with BlueHost, you simply buy one of their hosting plans:

Step 1

Navigate to one of their hosting plans and click on “Select”. You’ll be redirected to the domain page.

Step 2

On the domain setup page, you can put in your domain name if you have or specify a new one you’d like to register in BlueHost’s domain search engine on the left.

If you don’t want to setup a domain yet, you can just click on “I’ll create my domain later”

Step 3

On the checkout page, fill in your account creation details:

Next, your billing schedule from the dropdown – month, annually, or a 3-year plan:

Choose any additional services you want as addons, fill in your payment details, and click ‘Submit’. And that’s it!

Once your payment is confirmed, you will have your BlueHost account created.

BlueHost’s modern control panel

Managing your account and website backend on BlueHost is fairly easy and the host features a modern cPanel to help you do just that.

To access your CPanel, from your main dashboard, simply click on ‘Hosting’ and cPanel. You will then be redirected to the login page.

BlueHost’s cPanel allows you to set up new email accounts, organize your website files, access your DNS settings, manage your database, configure your security settings, and so much more.

How to install WordPress on BlueHost

BlueHost comes with WordPress built in and only requires a few clicks to install the software and assign it to your website.

Step 1

To install WordPress on BlueHost, from your dashboard, click on ‘Hosting’ and then ‘Add site’ to set up a new website on your account.

Step 2

Click on ‘Install WordPress’ and click ‘Continue’. You’ll then be directed to fill in your site title. However, you can also click ‘skip for now’ to move right on to the next step.

Step 3

Enter your domain name or use a temporary domain name and click ‘Continue’. WordPress will now begin to install. 

Finally, click ‘Login to WordPress’.

BlueHost makes it incredibly easy to access your WordPress website. Once set up, you won’t need to login to your WordPress portal anymore but can directly access your website from your hosting dashboard.

What are some of BlueHost’s complementary services?

BlueHost offers some of the most comprehensive complementary services on the market. Some of them include:

Website design services

Digital marketing services

Professional email setup

Access to third-party suites like Google Workspace

Premium WordPress services

BlueHost’s complementary services help consolidate all your website’s needs in one place. You can use one provider to purchase a domain name, get hosting, design your website, get professional email addresses, get marketing services, etc.

Conclusion: Do We Recommend BlueHost?

We put BlueHost through its paces to see if its packages are worth considering. BlueHost is easily one of the best hosting providers on the market – they not only provide hosting plans but a truckload of complementary services that simplify setting up and managing your website.

If you plan to create a website using WordPress, BlueHost is indeed the best host for you. When you check out their WordPress-specific features and WonderSuite website builder, you’ll see why they have retained the title of WordPress no. 1 recommended host.

My only criticism of BlueHost would be they can do better in terms of performance and server response time.

Visit BlueHost →

[mr-hyde-on-the-move]

From Keywords to Profit & Monetization: Build Your Website Using Instant Sites Builder AI

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the need for an online presence is undeniable for businesses and individuals alike. Instant Sites Builder AI claims to be the solution for those seeking millions of free traffic from Google with minimal effort. This review aims to explore the features, benefits, and potential drawbacks of this automated website creation tool. Overview of Instant Sites…

[arolesbianism]

You know I rly rly wish Jackie had more personal logs because god damn do we barely get to see her perspective on like anything. Like... What gets me most abt Jackie is that she clearly on some level still cares abt Olivia. Olivia was a very important person to her. I don't think Jackie is some victim or anything, but I have to imagine it hurt to watch someone that close to you drift away and grow to hate you. I just find it interesting to imagine Jackie as almost petty in her coldness to Olivia. Like, the two have been working closely for years, Jackie Knows that Olivia isn't the purely moral scientist she seems to think she is, and while I do still think Jackie is worse, I also do think she had a point when she did point out Olivia's hypocrisy. So it just makes me think... Did Jackie maybe become more stubborn against Olivia's feedback because of this? I think it'd be interesting if from her point of view, Olivia has been actively manipulative in her hypocrisy. I think it'd be so fun if Olivia wasn't just an annoyance, but the villain of Jackie's story from her point of view? I just like the idea of them both being the villains of each other's stories, it adds more to the doomed toxic yuri I think

[firoz857]

Overcoming Challenges, Embracing AI, and Finding Authenticity in Business with Lexi Hartman

[cephalopod-celabrator]

I like these polls and this concept even though it's been done so

[mercurial-chuckles]

Giddy Affairs

Pairing: Congressman!Husband!Bucky Barnes x Wife!Reader WC: ~300 Warnings: Fluff | Established relationship | Bucky getting nasty with you in his office | Bucky being insatiable | Bucky being a simp for his wife | Bucky being hot and incorrigible | Allusions to spicy times | Some wrist-tying | Some language | Very much unbeta’d | Lemme know if I missed anything! A/N: Sorry, I haven't been in a great headspace and I've been running my blog on queue. I promise I'll get back to all your wonderful messages/asks/reblogs ASAP. Put this together super quickly for Hot Bucky Summer 2025 | Week 03 Prompt: "Not now" | @buckybarnesevents Thank you for hosting. 😊✨🥹💞 Note: Do not Steal, Copy, or Plagiarize any part of my work! I do not consent to AI scraping my work. Banner & Divider made by me. Picture credits to Pinterest. Check out my other works: Masterlist Hot Bucky Summer Masterlist

Indulge Away!

"Where d'you think you're going?" Bucky drawled, fisting your dress at the small of your back and yanking you against him.

"OW! BUCKY."

You chuckled, trying to squirm away from his grip, but he didn't let you up, instead, he wrapped an arm around your waist, pressing you firmly to him as he dragged you toward his office.

"Congressman Barnes, Mr. Elliot wants to meet you," Grayson, Bucky's assistant, stopped you just before you both entered Bucky's office. He was clearly flustered to have walked in on yet another intimate moment.

"Not now. Reschedule it for tomorrow," Bucky murmured tersely.

You blushed, offering Grayson an awkward smile before Bucky shut the door.

"Bucky," you admonished, giggling as he lifted you with one arm and carried you to the couch.

He tossed aside his suit jacket, muttering about, "Stupid entrapments."

"What did you think, Mrs. Barnes? You'd show up looking like that and torture me?"

"I love that tie. Don't ruin it, Mr. Barnes," you warned, biting back your grin when you saw him loosen his tie in a hurry to unbutton the top two buttons of his white shirt.

You toed off your heels as he backed you toward the plush couch.

"That tie," he said, already yanking it loose, "is now your problem."

Before you could quip back, he pounced, pinning your wrists to the cushions and expertly looping the silk around. "You're too smug for a woman about to be ruined by her husband."

You laughed, breathless and bound, "Congressman Barnes, you're abusing your power."

He leaned in, nipping at your jaw, "I'm exercising my rights."

"How very patriotic."

"Mmm. Civic duty, doll," His smug reply went muffled as he licked a trail down your chest and took one of your tits into his mouth.

A sudden thought occurred to you, "Buck. The cameras."

He paused, chuckling, eyes glinting at you, "I disabled 'em the time we broke the desk."

"Good times," you said, your laugh turning into a lewd moan as he dragged your panties down.

"Let's see if we can top those times, sweetheart," he said, unzipping his pants.

Well?!

Leave your thoughts if you enjoyed reading it. 💞✨

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[atcuality1]

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[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[literalgrill]

Do NOT Support Hard Drive On Patreon

You might see friends today suggesting you support Hard Drive on Patreon today. You know, the funny video games version of The Onion? As a journalist, I will firmly tell you DO NOT GIVE THEM A DIME.

The CEO has pushed out all former staff that have built the site up to its current greatness and has been pushing the use of AI. The staff begged to have a Patreon before basically all being pushed out, but the idea was refused until now, when it will only line the pockets of a single person instead of hard working writers.

I know they might have provided laughs before, but Hard Drive is a shell of what it was once. Let it die and support the people who actually made those moments of joy possible. Don't believe me? Check out what former employees are saying below:

Kevin Podas: Okay you know what, I would feel bad saying nothing about this, so here goes:🚨SAVE YOUR MONEY🚨

We passionately advocated for a Patreon at Hard Drive & were aggressively shot down. The talent & people who built the site were pushed out. To see this now is beyond upsetting. For the past few years or so I put a lot of myself into this website. I pitched a ton of jokes, got over 120 articles published, & met a lot of great people. I'm sure if you've been following me for some time you could easily see this.

However, there is a lot of misinformation. I was eventually promoted to Managing Editor of the site & was ecstatic. Grateful for the opportunity. Felt like all of my hard work in the comedy mines was finally paying off. But things took a turn for the worst, & each day there were new surprises that affected our livelihoods. These were all very avoidable surprises, mind you.

A patreon was going to be our hail mary, but alas, for some reason, the power that be did not want it. Causing us to leave a dream job behind. "At least we did all we could," we consoled ourselves afterwards. I put a lot of myself into this project. I pitched all sorts of ideas that could have helped-- we all did. Merch collaborations, Patreon-integrated YouTube content, so much more. And most of them were shot down out of sheer stubbornness and nothing more. To see lie after lie spread, and multiple big publications and YouTubers that I am a fan of promote this Patreon under these pretenses is incredibly upsetting. There are so many receipts.

Please share this and consider pulling out if you've already put money into this. On Hard Drive using AI, also from Kevin Podas: I can't personally confirm that part aside from some of the recent header images for articles on both Hard Drive and Hard Times are being made with AI. As far as writing, it's been mentioned in the past, but I personally do not know. Maybe others do, maybe not. MORE From Kevin Podas suggesting the owner denying a Patreon being set up earlier cost an artist a job that was replaced by AI: We had a social media person who was awesome! He made the images until this AI implementation. He had to leave because ad revenue was low and a Patreon was aggressively refused.

Luca Fisher: at the risk of burning some bridges, i have to back up kevin here. i've only been part-time, in-and-out of hard drive since i got in last year, but i can corroborate that management doubled and tripled down about not hosting a patreon/crowdfunding and that many other suggestions and ideas, including mine (and ones much smarter than mine!), were shot down in really long, apocalyptic threads of everyone left on deck desperately trying to come up with ways to keep the lights on. managerially it has been messy and sad

i've written for multiple publications that have long since died, ones that were in the process of dying, and ones that, in this case, are soon to be put in the ground. it is sad and sucks every time. i don't know what could have been done differently, but i do know that a lot of great writers and content creators were left shorthanded and unhappy by the way things have gone. and it is sort of puzzling to see the sudden championing of patreon after we were all told plenty of times that it couldn't work and we should move on also, just to add my own personal two cents here, i was really disappointed by the shuttering of many different article sections on the site over the past 6-8 months. i understand cutting corners in a deficit, and i know it had to be done. that said…

all in all, i'm really sad to see this all happen. i don't fault anyone, if only because i don't really know enough about how this all can happen to make sense of it. games journalism is in a sad, sorry state, and will likely no longer be a thing in the next decade

VideoSealMan: I'm gonna say this because I think I deserve to. For months, MONTHS on end I was bugging Hard Drive management about a Patreon. Often I got ignored for a week+, but when I actually got a response I was encouraged to - of all things, write up a Google Doc pitching the concept I did it regardless. I wasn't the only one trying to sway management on a Patreon, but so fiercely was I fighting for it that last night, I was accused of making this comment directly by the CEO! With no evidence whatsoever! After I'd been gone for over a month.

I vouched so hard for Patreon because I wanted all the writers and creatives working with Hard Drive including myself to get paid better. When I actually got a response, the idea was often shut down. Eventually due to the state of my company, my pay was cut for a second time I confronted management alongside a couple other important figureheads at the org and told them that if we couldn't do a Patreon - I could no longer financially justify staying there. The answer was still no, so I left. Baffled at the decision, but whatever.

It is unendingly frustrating to know that myself and many other people who put their soul into Hard Drive LEFT because of management's absolute refusal to compromise on a Patreon, to then see them launch one anyway a month later and get over 1000 people pledging money. I'm seeing a lot of things float around about greed and people being fired. No one was fired. Everyone who left, left because they were sick of management's decision-making. And honestly, management is a lot of things but I would not call them greedy. (From my experience.) They did genuinely make an effort to pay people as much as possible. I found the pay very fair for a while. I am not disputing that I was paid what I was owed - yet management frequently feels the need to remind critics of that. Lmao, yes. I was paid what I was owed. No one is disputing payment. You did the bare minimum a business owner should do and paid everyone their due, very well done. I make no allegations of greed, cheating or foul play. I make allegations of poor management and incompetence that has fucked over other people.

Basically the only people left at Hard Drive have been there for about 2 months. They will reap the rewards of this successful Patreon I and so many others passionately fought for for so long. We will not see a dime.

I do not know the new people at Hard Drive, But I feel bad for them. They were haphazardly thrust into Hard Drive's workplace with little to no explanation on how anything works, or given any context on the state of the place. Even now managements feeds them half-truths and misinformation about other people's grievances. I am broke and have been for a while. I had to move out of my flat in Reading and back with my family because of how little money I was making. This has basically doomed my flatmate to moving back in with abusive parents, which is something I feel guilty about every day. If we had gone with the Patreon I worked myself hoarse over back then, this could have been avoided. Some of my other good pals could also not have been fucked over.

It was a bad judgment call, but it's not a crime. It's just management getting it wrong.

So should you give to the Hard Drive Patreon? I don't know! I don't think any of the new people working there to patch up the holes left by the recent mass exodus have any bad intentions. Maybe they deserve it! But it is not the same site you knew a year ago, or even a month ago. Myself and many people who were there far longer than me and did far more for it than I did are all gone now because we could not deal with management's terrible decision-making and dogass communication any longer. That's what you should know, imo

I had an agreement in place with management that I would receive the next 8 months of revenue from the Hard Drive YT channel from my leaving in November. This was a deal I appreciated, and thought was very fair on management's behalf. So far, the deal has been honoured for 2 months. However as of last night I was removed from the Hard Drive Slack without warning, and as an editor for the YouTube channel. This means I no longer have any way of verifying how much I am owed, I just have to take their word for it. I'm sure management will make their own statements full of half-truths and weird language on the many cases being brought against them - I'd take everything they say with a pinch of salt if some of the screenshots I've seen of them talking about me are any indication lol

To management; I do not want to talk to you. I want you to DM me a screenshot of how much I'm owed every month and then send me the money per our agreement until June, then we can go our separate ways. Do that and admit to your mistakes, and maybe you can recover your reputation! That's it from me, lol. If they pull out of the deal and fuck me over I'll have more to say, but most of what I know is other people's stories of incompetence and poor decision-making, lol. I genuinely get no pleasure out of doing this; I do not think management is evil - I just think they're really bad at what they do and it's cost other, more talented people, lol. You should believe the writers imo

One last thing I wanna say btw, management did often stress that no one should try to make Hard Drive a full time thing. They were transparent about that, and that is fair. I was working on it because at a few points, I was lead to believe we actually were doing a Patreon. Many other ppl have similar stories of being strung along by management changing their minds and stop-starting shit every 2 weeks. We all made the fatal mistake of overestimating our manager - who would tell you one thing one day and something totally opposite the next week lol

Hunter R. Thompson:

I'm not your dad, but speaking as a Hard Drive writer, I don't know that funding Hard Drive on Patreon is worth it

The driving talent on the back end—behind the kickass site I joined in 2019—have peaced out over the years as the site's been (in our view) increasingly mismanaged. Mismanagement like, not setting up crowdfunding before the ship sank and all its best crew failed; or publishing a screenshot of Andy Ngo pedojacketing a trans writer, complete with her deadname; or a disgruntled ex-writer getting falsely accused of shit-talk, by actual staff. I'm grateful for the writing I've gotten to produce for HD (and will forever be kicking myself for not writing even more, in the four years I've had to do it!! i'm a dumbass!!!) but it is very much no longer the site I signed up for.

I don't want to resign as a contributor altogether, because I'm open to the idea of the site recovering and bad practices being retired as finances level out-- it would just be dishonest for potential backers to not be Aware Of The Circumstances, I think.

Jeremy Kaplowitz: i truly don't want to start shit, but feel compelled to say: i want to see Hard Drive succeed w/o resorting to throwing former writers & editors, myself included, under the bus. surely there's a way to save the site without building it over the corpses of those who left. my $0.02 i don't blame anyone who wants to sign up for the HD patreon and i support the website, but that includes those who worked on it for years, have complaints, and don't deserve to be treated like bitter assholes like this kind of stuff is just objectively true, meanwhile there's these new writers who joined the site after i left (meaning, in the last ~3 months) claiming people are liars. decide for yourself if you care, but this is what happened! [Quotes this Tweet]

Seth Finkelstein: Writing for Hard Drive has been a privilege the past few years, and it makes me so angry to see people I looked up to get jerked around behind the scenes. The amount of grenades the editors jumped on our behalf is immense, and I don't think the way they're being treated is right.

Other Bits On AI: We do know for sure however that AI art has been used by the site. Its fucking owner confirms it here:https://twitter.com/MattSaincome/status/1743040541603123622. Seems the owner pushed AI written articles as well! TayFabe: My vaguetweet is making the rounds & these made me apoplectic. - owner regularly lobbied using ai. Once he tested it & said ai was writing better satire than 25% of the HT/HD writers. - ai images were used on the site & socials w/o consulting the team or disclosing it publicly I found the ai bit relevant to include bc 1) it illuminates a stark change in HD's current direction & leadership, 2) ai images have previously been used on the site and (since deleted) ig posts, 3) ai content fucking sucks, and repeatedly pushing to use it is a telling quality The "handful of writers who chose to leave" includes 2 editors-in-chief (both cofounders who wrote a combined total of >1,000 articles & defined the voice of HD), & at least 3 other editors. These guys put in WORK since 2017, so cool to be corrected by ppl who joined in Nov 2023 [Link to mentioned vague tweet from post.] More from TayFabe: owner continuously lobbied for using ai in every possible way. No one else wanted to do it, but he kept on, saying ai was writing better satire than 25% of the HT/HD writers. Also, ai images were used on the site & socials without public disclosure or consulting the team.

The owner has responded now multiple times in a private discord... Thank you for people sharing screenshots! First Screenshot:

Kevin's Response: He banned me from the server for speaking out, so no, I didn't see it. And he gave no indication of a timeline, it was just "we'll do one when *I* say so" and gave every inclination he was totally against it. It bred an environment that pushed our hands to have to leave. Screenshot Round Two:

Kevin's Response: "Starting one in 3 months" is an absolute lie. He denied it, I have screenshots and others who can confirm. No timeline was given. Just "this is what it is now" and like, I couldn't live off of that. I wanted to do more but he was allergic to good ideas from others around him.

Matt, owner of Hard Drive, responds publicly on Twitter.

Matt: Kevin, the patreon launch was delayed because I didn't think it would work. Everyone is happy that it did work. Everyone who left the site because we didn't have money to pay for creative content which didn't revenue is welcome to return home. But unclear why the hostility.

Hard Drive paid out literally every dollar it had, then a bunch more, to creative people who worked on the site. When we ran out of money, we couldn't pay anymore. We did our best.

Kevin: Right, and my point of this thread was that it was completely and totally avoidable. This is reasonable to be upset about. How could I have been any more clear?

Matt: If we knew with 100% certainly that the community would have supported us via patreon, we would have done that. We didn't know. We had tried 4 years ago and got no support. We were wrong this time. We did our best to figure it out. We paid all the money we could.

Kevin: So you knew with 100% certainty this time? Or you took a leap of faith?

Matt: It was a last gasp panic effort after ad rates got cut in half on january 1st due to seasonal spending changes. We didn't know it would work. We were embarrassed to ask for support. We wanted to figure it out.

Kevin: Every site has a Patreon. Every YouTuber, comedy group, etc. But you insisted that nobody cared about Hard Drive. Which is wildly untrue. I know you see that now, but again, I think you can see why I and many others are pretty upset. A last ditch panic effort was long overdue. A couple more things from Matt:

It was about the size of the hole we needed plugged budget wise, the time I had left of personal resources, and the past data I had about us trying a patreon (which turned out to be a bad indicator). I didn't think the Patreon would help us fast enough. I made a bad estimation

aka "if we make $1000 more dollars a month via patreon, which would be 10x what we got last time, we will not solve any of our problems. If instead we try to plow down path B, we might make it out in time." That was the thinking. I chose the wrong path, but didn't mean to Kevin also retweeted this comment from the user Matt was responding to: So you're saying that you're bad at running the business, didn't listen to any of your employees until after they were forced to leave their jobs, and now you're going to get more of the money from the Patreon that was their idea in the first place? Matt's Response: Respectfully, I made a mistake delaying the patreon decision. But keeping a comedy site alive for 9 years is not easy, there are lots of potential ideas, and think overall we've done a good and honorable job. Will leave this thread in peace now to allow people their space.

Sorry for linking to Elon's hellsite (derogatory), but sources need links so...

[metamatronic]

WilliamWasFramed!AU Masterlist

this is the google doc for the big scary timeline, btw

and here’s the big scary character chart

Character Designs:

2025 Designs: Kiddos/ Bullies and Owners / VR Gang / Will, Mark, and Phone Dude / Arnold / Dispatch (and old arnold)

Post-FNaF 6 Afton Designs

Height Chart

2024 Mikey Afton Design Timeline

Cassie & Bonnie Bro

2024 Bullies

Old William, Henry & Mark Designs

Old David/Jack Designs

Comics & Doodles:

Mask Bot Saga @ MCM Ruins : Pt. 1 / 2 / 3

William on Edwin Murray

Michael Visits Murray’s Costume Manor Pt.1 / Pt. 2 /

Welcome Home, Dad Pt. 1 / Pt. 2

The Thanksgiving Debacle Pt. 1 / Pt. 2 / Pt. 3

Entire AU in a Nutshell

Michael Meets Springtrap

Michael the Reluctant Host

William Gets A New Friend

On Ennard

Lizzie’s No Good, Very Bad Day Pt 1 / 2 / 3

Will and Lizzie Discuss the Claw

No Beach Days For the Aftons

Henry’s Punishment

Mike on Sibling Rivalry

The Springlock Incident (Cass & Charlie POV) - Part 1 / Part 2 / Phone Guy Follow Up

The Mask Bot Saga: Part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Bonnie Bro & Mike (1983) Doodles: Part 1 / Part 2

VR Gang Meets William: Part 1

Michael Roomate Simulator

Springle Doodles

Old VR Gang Shenanigans: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Misc. Asks:

Q: Pronouns?

Full Michael & William Timeline

Q: Is F10-N4 an AI or Fiona’s Ghost?

Q: Which Aftons Can Fight?

Q: Clarification on William’s Death?

Q: William in the Saferoom for 30 years?

Q: Arnold is the Baby Owl in Moon.Exe?

Q: Thoughts on Glamrock Freddy

Q:David Afton and Cassidy Relationship?

Q: Did Henry Make the Video Games?

Q: Why is Phantom Puppet MCI!Jeremy?

Q: Who Designed Which Animatronic?

Q: How does Mark have Ghost Powers?

Q: Why did Baby and Ennard separate?

Q: Illusion Disc Technicalities

Q: Does William still sound like a Bond villain?

Q: Why did Henry kill his own daughter?

Q: Why does Mike make himself look 20 with the illusion disc?

Mostly?? Accurate VR Gang Headcanons

Older Comics*:

Afton Family Doodles (with some outdated info)

Charlie is still Mike’s cousin in his heart, even if it isn’t accurate to the AU anymore

Have Y’all Ever Noticed They Canonically Misgender the Puppet?

The Universe Won’t Let Michael Die

Mike on Ennard’s Escape

Veeeeerry old designs and headcanons. Look Away

Old MCI and other characters that don’t exist anymore

*There’s a lot of stuff in these older comics that I don’t consider accurate to the AU anymore.