Use a Custom Domain Name

From a blog post by Manuel Moreale:

Please, for the love of all things web-related, if you decide to do anything online, get yourself a domain name. Don’t rely on the 3rd party domain provided by services like Blogger, Substack, Tumblr, whatever. Yes, it’s an extra cost but owning your URLs is important. If Substack dies tomorrow, all your fancy-cool-name.substack.com URLs are gone. And all the links scattered across the web that were pointing to them are now broken.

I wholeheartedly agree with Manu’s thoughts on the matter - for anything you do online, especially something that you want to both last and be semi-easily found by you and others later, please use your own custom domain name!

This is something I put into practice years ago, and while I’m not the most prolific blogger, nor the best web designer, having a domain of my own on the web to point people to for both information about me (and ways to get in contact), as well as blog posts going back almost a decade, has been one of the better time investments I think I’ve made online.

As I quoted Monique Judge in a post at the beginning of this year:

We should all be in control of our own platforms. Owning your content and controlling your platform is essential, and having a personal blog is a great way to do that.

(So) buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.