Why is this website like this?

So this is a very interesting question.

Why would anyone, in their right mind decide to have a website which doesn't serve the purpose that a website is built for i.e. marketing?

Before this website, as you see it, existed a better version of this website - hosted on digital ocean, with ghost.org as CMS, & I was proud of it. I did everything by myself. Be it understanding how to use the terminal to log in to my droplet, finding the right theme, or enabling people to subscribe to my updates, I even had 200+ subscribers on my mailing list. I know this might sound too little but this isn't substack. This was a DIY project which took shape during the pandemic. 

One of the most exciting things that came out of this exercise was discovering my love for writing. And boy! I sure wrote a lot. From my 4000+ word essay on how it was working with Cleartrip for 5 years, to what I think is happening in the world of travel-tech, to even covering bits of the startup that I am building. The website used to get 50-60 people spending anywhere between 2-3mins reading it - as per google analytics, every month.

But like all good things must come to an end - the earlier version of this website met a fateful destruction episode. It all started with RBI announcing compulsory 2FA for all credit card transactions across not just Indian but any payment gateway in the world. Remember that time when all subscription payments were failing? Sweet horror stories - where we all had to manually start paying for things that we all cared about?

After going through that nightmare month after month - I ended up switching to annual billing.  If there is anything worse than remembering things daily is remembering things that are once a year. And also any over-productivity-bro would have done it my emails from digital ocean used to go into a folder in my inbox which only had a CAGR double than crypto for unread emails.

And just like that - the digital ocean account went from suspended, to droplet being switched off, to finally on the fateful day of 3rd August 2023 it was destroyed. It's funny that they use the word destroyed - because that's exactly what they did with my DIY project. I also had backup enabled - ON THE SAME DROPLET. So poof went everything. Customer support could only give me a message of condolence. I had to accept it gracefully because who else is to be blamed than whoever everyone is blaming these days?

So kids, the moral of the story is that - pay attention to your unread emails. You might find something amazing, something important, & sometimes something completely unexpected.

If you are too young to understand the above reference - I'll be back - with a better one!