Have a look at the top of your web browser, notice anything different? If I’ve done everything correctly you should now be looking at this page from therefinedgeek-30da7e.ingress-bonde.easywp.com and not my old address. Yes I decided to listen to my peers and buy the domain name. For now the DNS routing to this address is a bit hacky but that will all change come the 26th when I get my static IP address, so if the site is down temporarily it’s probably because my Internet disconnected and I had to manually update the host record, but I don’t see it staying down for long.
When I first built this site I was doing it mostly to get some exposure to web technologies, predominately Windows 2008 server and the goodies that it comes with. I was happy with a DynDNS account that would automatically route everyone to my website no matter what happened to my connection, but that all changed after one of my old friends contacted me.
Whilst getting a domain name was always on the table I had never really considered the potential benefit of getting one. Sure there’s the whole brand recognition stuff and the small amount of prestige from having a unique name on the web but what really got to me was how someone else could be making money off my work, without even having to do anything apart from hosting a DNS service. I guess he knew one of my weak points and wanted to help out; I get pretty motivated when I find out someone is making more from me then I think they should 😉
It’s also a natural progression from a site that started out as just a test bed for various web technologies but evolved into the creative outlet I use it for today. I’ve also never really worked with a proper domain name and if you were unfortunate enough to come across the site whilst I was getting everything right you would’ve been greeted by various levels of errors, funny looking pages and redirection loops. All part of the process, and it was a good hour of fooling around to get everything right.
So, update your bookmarks, RSS feeds and whatever else you may have this site flagged as. I’ll probably keep the old link up for a little while before turning it off, as I don’t want people relying on that one 🙂
have you listed with google yet? try and get analytics going too, very addictive.
btw, you know you have an evil twin right? refinedgeek.com
also seems to be from australia.. fight to the death please
Yeah, when I googled “refined geek,” I got a huge amount of results, but couldn’t spot yours amongst the mess. You’ll have to fight to get on top of the stack.
And yeah, analytics is fun. I suspect if you’re serious, a small amount of money will get you something far nicer than google’s offering, though (which I find isn’t really up to their usual standard).
This is the first time a new post notification in facebook/twitter has actually helped where my RSS reader couldn’t!
I have updated the site in google, and I’m working on getting it all verified with them. I’m having a couple issues because I moved the directories on my web server and the permissions are all whacky, but its a 5 minute fix.
Funny story about my evil twin. When I was first thinking up a name for this site I googled all the names I was thinking of. The Refined Geek didn’t bring up anything so I went with it. After doing a little digging on google I found his site. The funny thing is that we’re both into technology, both have WordPress blogs and are even around the same age. I had one of those Twilight Zone moments when I saw it, I almost expected to see a picture of myself with a goatie 😉
We have different objectives for our blogs though by the looks of it, but I’m never one to back down from a fight 😛
I’m working on getting myself up the ladder but as always, it’s either struggling against google’s system or paying into it. Once I’ve established myself a bit more in the web space I’ll probably end up purchasing some adwords, that will at least get me at the top.
yeah, get other sites to link to you. All you have to do is write your master piece and get it on digg, slashdot, etc..