Yes. As others have pointed out, domain registry is cheap. (Some enterprise-oriented top level domains such as .fm, .game, .movie, etc can be expensive, though.) Since my name and initials aren’t uncommon, I’ve registered several versions to fence off an identity for my LLC and my online photography presence. (I use one for LLC email.) Both of my nyms have one, too, out of what is surely an over-abundance of caution.
@Bmosbacker have you thought about using Craft with a custom domain for a simple blog or web site? This would cut on costs if you are already using Craft. Check out Numeric Citizen’s example setup.
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FYI, I asked almost the same question on this post , Blogging Platform for Novice and I learned so much from people here.
FWIW, IA writer can post directly to micro.blog too
you may also want to check out Montaigne, it is a plain vanilla blog published using your Apple Note, plain and simple
I’ve considered it but have questions.
- Can a custom domain be obtained through Craft or do I somehow connect Craft to my domain?
- I presume people have to have a link to the Craft document(s), which means that the “blog” would not be discoverable on the web–is that correct?
- Is there any mechanism for people to subscribe to receive updates the blog from the Craft document?
It’s meant for very simple use cases but I think it could work well for what you’re trying to do. The added benefit is that you can simplify your workflow and not add other apps, tools, or services. To answer your questions:
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You connect your own domain to Craft and it’s very easy to do. At the moment, each account can only support one custom domain. See more here: https://support.craft.do/hc/en-us/articles/6370647764765-Custom-domains
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You would create one main document “home page” that would link to other pages. Then you would add a redirect to point your domain name to that page. For example my domain hey.iamjake.io redirects automatically to hey.iamjake.io/jake-peterson. Craft lets you change the URL slug for the document and then your domain registrar will have an option to redirect. There aren’t a lot of options for SEO but the web site will be discoverable.
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No, it doesn’t support RSS feeds or subscribing yet, so people will have to visit the web site. However, it does have a nice commenting feature built-in.
Hope that helps!
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Having your own domain implies you are serious. Don’t get rid of it. I don’t understand why you don’t use it for more than just your blog, like for email addresses. And those prices are out of line. I use Bluehost for hosting and pay $167/year (the full price). I have several domains, each under $20/year, that I’ve had hosted by Godaddy for decades.
With the Bluehost hosting I run two traditional (pure HTML) websites plus one that runs Wordpress software for the blog. The blog has RSS so no need to send out emails when there is a post. All the sites have HTTPS which keeps Google’s algorithms happy. I also have email accounts for my family and personal business (10 total) as well as 10 more forwarders, some for relatives that just want the Almy.us address but don’t want the mailbox.
+1 for micro.blog. One nice feature is that you can cross post – new micro.blog posts can also go to Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Medium, Tumblr, Flickr(!) and possibly others. So you can meet your readers where they are, instead of asking them to come to you. (Not sure about FB, but you aren’t reaching them there anyway as it is.)
Also +1 for blot.im – it’s a great blogging system that uses a folder of markdown documents on Dropbox, Git or Google Drive – your posts stay very much yours. There are ways to store drafts, include images, theme sites and posts, include static pages, etc. It’s very clever and straightforward, leaving you to write and post rather than fiddle with endless settings. And with RSS, you can produce a newsletter
Also, does FB guarantee that followers see posts? I know at least some of the big social media platforms, the algorithm doesn’t necessarily expose all posts to all followers all the time; thus “sponsored” posts. But I could be misremembering.
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Thanks for the nudge, just deleted Facebook account! 
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I’m not suggesting it’s your best choice, but just because I see this misconception fairly often, I wanted to point out that your audience can freely read everything you write on Medium without having to pay a cent.
They would only need a membership if you choose to become a Medium Partner and publish behind the paywall. Monetization on Medium is entirely optional.
And you don’t have to pay a cent either, by the way, though you would likely want to become a Medium member to unlock the ability to use a custom domain (for all the reasons others have expressed) rather than the Medium subdomain. In that sense you can look at it as Medium costing $50/y for a blogging service with some built in network effects that also happens to give you access to some additional perks as a reader.
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Based on my experience, you only have to pay $5 for the first month to setup custom domain in medium. Once that is setup, you can choose not to renew and keep your custom domain with Medium. Therefore, it is a no cost solution…
I considered Medium for my use case and detailed the pros and cons of Medium:
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Not to suggest that you replicate my own setup, as it depends on how comfortable you are with certain pieces of tech, but here is what I do, just so you can get an idea of price comparison:
- Domains registered through Cloudflare - all about $10/year each
- Hosting is with GitHub - using GitHub Pages feature. - cost is $0.00
I have three domains and use multiple subdomains on one of them. Each subdomain is its own separate web site. My total cost for all domains and sites is around $30/year.
Agreed that your pricing seems way high. I own several domains for me and members of my family and I don’t think I’ve paid more than $17 a year for any of them. All done via Hover.
Hosting my blog/site sgclark.com is the big cost in the equation for me however I offset much of it by reselling hosting to ‘technically challenged’ friends/acquaintances who also want their own site.
It is your content and you should have it on a platform that you fully control and can easily download your content/data. Meta is not a place for that.
Is it possible to move my domain name registration to another company?
Yes. You:
- “Unlock” the domain at the old registrar
- Get an EPP (transfer) code from the old registrar
- Go to a new registrar
- Pay for a year of registration
- Give the new registrar the EPP code
- Jump through any other hoops they require
…and then you’re done. Your year of registration you paid will be added to the expiration date of your domain.
There are some caveats (like you can’t transfer right after you’ve registered a domain). It can take several days to a week for everything to go through, so it’s not a great idea to try to pull it off with 24 hours left on your registration. And if you use your current registrar’s nameservers and have DNS records set up there, those records will not move. You’ll have to set them up at the destination registrar. If you have your DNS pointed elsewhere (a hosting company, Cloudflare, etc.) you’ll be good.
But really, it’s not difficult. It’s just a matter of getting the info you need, then going through the steps. Nearly every registrar has help docs detailing how to do this process, both on the “transfer away” and the “transfer in” sides.
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Thank you! Much appreciated
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Document with .pdfs or screen shots every step of the process.
It can come in handy.
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Echoing what others have said, those prices seem really high. Each year I pay $15 for my domain, and $60 for hosting. I run the self-hosted version of WordPress on it. That sufficed even back in the day when my site was active and got a good bit of traffic.
I will answer you heretical idea with an even more heretical one: create a Instagram profile and engage your audience with Stories and Reels.
Jokes aside, Wordpress.com is the safest bet, IMHO, and good old Blogspot is still there, it’s simple and AFAIK it’s basically free. Regarding the expected longevitiy of Blogspot: after a couple of decades Google must be keeping Blogspot because operating it is peanuts and it allows to build behavioural profiles of the visitors (and the creators) so it’s a great collateral for Google Marketing Platform.
Just make sure that whatever service you end up using, it exposes adequate RSS feeds, otherwise it is not a blog!
PS: Also as others have said, you should look into your DNS costs, 167$/yr is outrageously expensive --either you have more hosting services from Bluehost that you are not using (and if you don’t use them you don’t need them!), or you should transfer the domain registration to another service like Google Domains.
Debatable. Meta products (FB and IG) only show a small percentage of what friends and subscribed pages put out. It can also depend on what device is being used. For example, on my desktop Mac I see posts from people, on my MacBookPro I see different posts from those same people, and on my iOS/iPad devices I see posts from people whose work rarely shows up on the other devices.
I have long maintained that this selective display is because Meta cannot find anything in friends posts that can have spamverts hung therefore as these do not generate a click opportunity they won’t show the post(s).
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