Powerpedia

Does The Domain Name Really Matter?

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Over the years I have used several email addresses and different domain names for websites. In recent years I have been using the powerz.org domain. It was unique and relatively cool 10 years ago, but as I get older and I’m less concerned about anonymity on the Internet and more about people finding me I question if I should be continue to use it. My thoughts are if I’m going to have customized domain name, I might as well have one that represents me and not some silly reference to a TV show from the 90s. To be fair it’s an obscure reference to The Simpsons, and the Simpsons are still awesome however that still does not take away from the fact that any online presence should represent me.

I’m not sure what made me start thinking about this topic. It might have been because I am planning on buying a domain name for my baby when she is born. Let’s not go into the fact that MC thinks it’s not really necessary. She is right by the way, a baby does not need a domain name. I am getting it so down the road when she is old enough she will have one if she ever wants one. I did the same thing for my oldest niece and she actually is using it for her maill right now. But that’s off-topic.

My domain name usage has progressed from using Scott.ac for email and for a time my blog, to powerz.org. there’ve been other ones I’ve played around with for a short period of time. For example I used powerpedia.net for my blog for a while. I loved the Scott.AC domain, but the international domain name kind of confused people. I still have that one, and don’t plan on ever really giving it up. I just don’t want to use it for day-to-day stuff.

I am probably overthinking it. It’s most likely not that big of a deal to have an online presence with one domain versus another. I guess, well I kind of know I’m a perfectionist about this or stuff so I am compelled to go through the painful process of moving things to a new domain. As I started writing this post last week I was planning on moving everything from powerz.org to scottw.net. After getting opinions from several people (Jay was for the move, MC wasn’t) I decided to move ahead with moving my blog to the new domain. I will over time move my non personal mail to the new domain, but i will keep my personal powerz.org mail address that i have been using for years. MC likes the domain name even though it has no real meaning. It just sounds cool, so for personal use i will keep it. That decision made things pretty easy. If i did move my personal email address, the one used as my main google apps account I would have had a lot of work to migrate google services. Some stuff like Google Play purchases can’t be moved. Other things like google voice is a very painful thing to do.

In another post I will talk about the efforts from this weekend to migrate my blog to the new domain and a new hosting provider.

Still Findable On The Web

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My cousin Synde said that she googled her family and up came my blog. I think that is pretty cool. But that poses a problem. I don’t use first and last names. I may have used their first names in one past and last name in another one. if that isn’t it I don’t know how they would come up on my blog. I try not to be that conspicuous on the site. She was surprised that I had a blog. I could swear that I told her about it. Her husband knew about it, but I told him about it a long time ago.

I found the reference on the site that she found. I did use the last name once. I have since removed it. I am not a fan of posting last names on the site. Anonymity is nice for a bit. That being said I am making other changes to the site. I am slowly making the Powerpedia domain the only one for this blog. Why you ask? It’s whois information is hidden. Why is that important? I don’t want crazies knowing who I am. It is probably paranoid behavior, but I think it is worth the few bucks the anonymous registration cost.

I also changed the theme of the site back to my old theme. The new one was nice, but I didn’t like the fact that the center column with all my posts was not flexibly in size when you resized your browser. The posts were squished into a small space. My old (current) theme adjusts the posts based on the size of the browser window. Much nicer!