website anniversary
Tue Jun 19 11:32:25 EDT 2018
I just renewed the domain registration for my website. $8.50/year for the .name domain with Dynadot. Harumph - they have a referrals deal ($5 credit for each of us), but I'm not spending enough to qualify ($9.99/yr). I don't need a 2nd domain, and have no reason to use a more popular/expensive top-level domain. (And you'd probably be going for a cheap domain, too. ☺)
Looking at their price list, I see some even cheaper than .name. And some that are crazy expensive - for $250/year you could own donaldtrump.sucks; for $1990/year you could be .rich. Other domains are oddly expensive, or cheap, or just surprising to exist in the first place (.ninja?).
If you're getting your own domain because you want a stable presence (e.g. your photos have vanished from 2 hosting sites, leaving broken links in your blogs), pay attention to the renewal price; many are cheaper the first year (.us $1.99 -> $7.99; .life $1.85 -> $25.99!). I found this kind of thing with all the registration firms. I went with Dynadot because they were cheap (prices are different at every registrar) and not laden with convoluted enticements (i.e. not cheap in the fine print). My needs are minimal (one domain) and Dynadot has been simple and problem free.
Once you have a domain name, you'll need DNS support (so people can get to your web server by your domain name). Zonomi will do that for you for free if you have only one domain. I guess it's to get people familiar with them, in the hope that they'll stay as paying customers if/when their needs increase. This has been trouble free too.
Running a website has not been difficult. I've taken an old laptop (with a messed-up screen and a dead trackpad, so no longer fit for human use - but CPU and disk are fine), installed/configured a clean, lean webserver (nginx; comes with Ubuntu), and copied my website files to it. There's a few things I haven't done "right", but haven't taken the time to fix. The laptop's on WiFi, not wired to my router. The hard connection would just be more reliable. And I haven't automated updating the DNS if my ISP changes my home modem's IP. (If that were happening more often, it would be a problem to fix.) But if you have a low-traffic site, home hosting works pretty well. If you're not selling anything, 99.999% availability isn't an issue. (People see my DW/LJ postings with missing photos. Big wup.) Annual domain registration and electricity to run the laptop 24/7; pretty cheap.
Wednesday 03:36
Irony: 3 hours after I write about how easy it is to run a low-traffic website, my server loses its network connection for 12.5 hours. (I blame the thunderstorm.)
Sat 2018/Dec/08
I'm registering a 2nd domain now, so I can use the referral credits.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/994285.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
I just renewed the domain registration for my website. $8.50/year for the .name domain with Dynadot. Harumph - they have a referrals deal ($5 credit for each of us), but I'm not spending enough to qualify ($9.99/yr). I don't need a 2nd domain, and have no reason to use a more popular/expensive top-level domain. (And you'd probably be going for a cheap domain, too. ☺)
Looking at their price list, I see some even cheaper than .name. And some that are crazy expensive - for $250/year you could own donaldtrump.sucks; for $1990/year you could be .rich. Other domains are oddly expensive, or cheap, or just surprising to exist in the first place (.ninja?).
If you're getting your own domain because you want a stable presence (e.g. your photos have vanished from 2 hosting sites, leaving broken links in your blogs), pay attention to the renewal price; many are cheaper the first year (.us $1.99 -> $7.99; .life $1.85 -> $25.99!). I found this kind of thing with all the registration firms. I went with Dynadot because they were cheap (prices are different at every registrar) and not laden with convoluted enticements (i.e. not cheap in the fine print). My needs are minimal (one domain) and Dynadot has been simple and problem free.
Once you have a domain name, you'll need DNS support (so people can get to your web server by your domain name). Zonomi will do that for you for free if you have only one domain. I guess it's to get people familiar with them, in the hope that they'll stay as paying customers if/when their needs increase. This has been trouble free too.
Running a website has not been difficult. I've taken an old laptop (with a messed-up screen and a dead trackpad, so no longer fit for human use - but CPU and disk are fine), installed/configured a clean, lean webserver (nginx; comes with Ubuntu), and copied my website files to it. There's a few things I haven't done "right", but haven't taken the time to fix. The laptop's on WiFi, not wired to my router. The hard connection would just be more reliable. And I haven't automated updating the DNS if my ISP changes my home modem's IP. (If that were happening more often, it would be a problem to fix.) But if you have a low-traffic site, home hosting works pretty well. If you're not selling anything, 99.999% availability isn't an issue. (People see my DW/LJ postings with missing photos. Big wup.) Annual domain registration and electricity to run the laptop 24/7; pretty cheap.
Wednesday 03:36
Irony: 3 hours after I write about how easy it is to run a low-traffic website, my server loses its network connection for 12.5 hours. (I blame the thunderstorm.)
Sat 2018/Dec/08
I'm registering a 2nd domain now, so I can use the referral credits.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/994285.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]