From .com to .org

It is with great pride that I write this post: I have my own domain!

For some time I’d been considering the idea of getting one, but never knew when the right time was or when it would come. I’d had a suggestion from @colinmccarthy that I should get a domain name to host my blog that was small in character length, like my twitter name but when I enquired about getting “mled.com” I was shocked to receive word that it would cost $6500. Apparently four letter domains are hot property.

That pushed the notion away for at least a month until it was re-kindled with the emergence of domains using .me such as pleasedress.me which were suddenly a fashion. Because of the potential for sentences ending in .me I assumed (wrongly) that all .me domains were going to be priced at an even greater premium than .com, but curiosity got the better of me and I checked to see how much .me would cost. To my utter amazement 123-reg listed .me domain names at the same price as .co.uk and .org.uk. I dislike domain names that require you to press full stop more than once and that specify a country of origin; and in keeping with Colin’s wise words decided this was destiny – I should have a .me domain!

I registered http://mled.me and set about working on it in my free evenings. This work, coupled with joining @spode to write articles for thinkabouttech.com has meant that I’ve not posted anything here since Azure was launched. To add further neglect to this poor WordPress.com blog, it is with this post that I say goodbye to it forever – cue the madelines and violins. You are reading the output of a sublimely crafted piece of software which gave me my first real experience of blogging and got me hooked on the communication, discussion, debate and friendship that I’ve come to cherish and occasionally rely upon during quiet evenings.

Some might say, “but it’s just a blog” to which I argue that there’s so much that surrounds that blog – the reading, bookmarks, comments, and other interactions; not to mention themes, plugins and widgets. In short, there’s a vast spiral of other activity that grows out of a blog. Certainly now that I’ve joined thinkabouttech.com I hope to be attending more events, expos and launches like FOWA, with my blogging becoming more interesting, exciting and focused – surely showing how blogging has given me a whole aspect to my life, both digital and physical.

From here on then, my blog posts will be accessible from blog.mled.me and the rss feed can be found here

The scope of opportunity that comes bundled with your own domain is something I’ve not overlooked. If you load mled.me you’ll find it forwards to a twitter page which I’m using as a quick and cheap static site. Preemptive as I am, I’ve written this post on my re-homed Tumblr blog which is now called open.mled.me and I hope that gives some insight into twitter as well as proving there to be method in my madness. Other than the main WordPress.org blog and Tumblr blog, I’m going to be building a wiki for my projects which you’ll find on wiki.mled.me although it won’t be using MediaWiki for much longer as I’ve found something better suited to my needs. There’s also a Posterous account set up to receive funny emails that I forward to it, which you can find at post.mled.me

That’s it. The end of my WordPress.com days, and the start of a new life on my own WordPress.org blog. Thank you and goodnight!