Discussions

Okay, wait. Let me begin by saying something really, really important:

If you are blogging very casually, if you are only blogging for close family and friends, for fun, for fancy, or for your own personal enjoyment, it is not necessary to purchase your own domain. Of course, if your last name is Adams and you want to buy theadamsfamily.com just for kicks...then go for it!

(Not that you’ll even be able to GET theadamsfamily.com because...well, let’s just say finding a domain name that hasn’t been taken is like finding a needle in a haystack. But we’ll talk about that later.)

Dot com. Dot net. Dot tv. Dot info. Domains Domains Domains! It’s such a twisted labyrinth. But if you’re looking to take your blog or website global (Tee hee. I love that word.) or make it at least seem more mainstream, you might want to look into leaving behind the subdomain URL that comes with many blog hosts and getting your own domain.

For those of you who might be unclear of what I’m talking about, let me explain:

Most free/low cost blogging hosts (Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress) give you a subdomain URL for your blog. So in my case, it would be “thepioneerwoman.blogspot.com” or “thepioneerwoman.typepad.com”. In those cases, Blogger owns the domain blogspot.com and gives Blogger bloggers a subdomain under their domain.

My own domain, on the other hand, would be (and is!) thepioneerwoman.com.

When I started blogging, I used Blogger. My URL for the first six months of my blog was “pioneerwoman.blogspot.com”.

Then I moved to Typepad. My URL then became “pioneerwoman.typepad.com”. At that point, I had about four readers (okay, five), so while it was a little inconvenient to tell everyone to switch their bookmarks, it wasn’t that bad.

Then I decided I didn’t like having such a long domain, and one involving more than one “dot”. It was more difficult telling friends and family about it, and resulted in confusion. So I wound up purchasing the domain “thepioneerwoman.com”, and it’s been the same ever since.

Now, don’t confuse owning your own domain with having to host and design your own blog! That’s not the case. While my blog was a Typepad blog, I simply pointed (redirected) my own domain, thepioneerwoman.com TO my Typepad blog. So the only URL I had to give people who were interested was thepioneerwoman.com. The same is true for Blogger blogs or any other free blog you might have. All you have to do is ask your domain registrar (GoDaddy, com, NetworkSolutions.com, etc.) to redirect it to your blog. Done!

This came in handy in Fall 2007, when I finally struck out on my own and moved to a custom design on my own server. If I had kept using my pioneerwoman.typepad.com URL a year earlier, I would have had to tell everyone to change their bookmarks again, just as I’d asked them to change them when I switched from Blogger to Typepad.

Are you dizzy yet?

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To purchase your own domain, you have to find a domain registrar. There are scads of them out there: Network Solutions, GoDaddy, etc. I happen to use GoDaddy, well, just because, but I don’t know enough about the other registrars to recommend for or against any one registrar. Just shop around a bit...and don’t overpay!

Next, and this is the hilarious part, you have to actually find a domain that hasn’t already been taken! If you’ve ever tried to buy a domain before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s tough, especially if the name of your blog is anything mainstream at all. Sometimes it takes days of searching for different incarnations and combinations before you finally find one that’s available.

Searching for domain names you want is not a cakewalk.

But if you keep searching, you’ll find one. And while you don’t need to rush into anything right when you begin blogging, having your own domain longterm can really bump your blog up to the next level, give it somewhat of a more legitimate/professional feel, and---most importantly---will follow you around wherever you and your website decide to go.

theend.com

(Think that one’s taken yet?...)