On Blogging – The Custom Domain Name Question

by Valerie on September 30, 2009 · 5 comments

Today, I finalized something I had been mulling for a while, which was to move to a custom domain.  Here it is:

http://www.cgldaily.com/

Thanks to the magic of feedburner, the feed should remain unchanged.  
As I feared, the feed is not working.  My best suggestion for now is to resubscribe using this feed.  
Feedburner seems to be unhiccuping again – so now both feeds work.  I suggest you stick with the original feed .



 If you are a blogger, you have heard all the reasons  behind custom domains:

1. You should purchase your custom domain name before someone else does.
2. A domain name means you can switch templates more easily.
3. A domain name means you do not have to keep updating your readers with new blog addresses.
4. You must get your own domain name and ditch blogger ASAP because their templates are terrible.
5. It is just not cool to have a blog address with blogspot or wordpress in the title.
6. A domain name is an intrinsic part of marketing.

To be honest, some of those reasons were less compelling to me than others.  Some of the most sucessful food blogs like Orangette still have blogspot in their names.  As much as I love the idea of a fancy WordPress template with lots of tabs, I have no patience or time to really take  advantage of that.  Besides, Blogger is really catching up fast.

As for the coolness factor – I never did well with those types of reasons (yes, I was the supremely uncool bookish kid who rarely spoke in middle and high school) – but what that really comes down to is branding, which is of varying degrees of importance to bloggers.

That said, especially if blogging is part of your day job, a custom domain name really makes sense.  In my case, where the blog is more of a part-time endeavor on top of an already very full-time job, I remained ambivalent. What really pushed me over the edge and find a custom domain name, though, was that I did not like how long my old blog url was.  I wanted something easy to remember when people asked me about my blog which I suppose is part of a larger branding concern. 

I am still sort of ambivalent about my decision, especially because I was concerned about my feeds into people’s various readers being problematic, but so far it looks like everything is working.  And please let me know if it is not.  I will say that the fact that Blogger now allows you to do the purchasing of the domain name through them was what made me take the plunge, combined with the fact I found a nice short domain name I liked.

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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Dina Haansley September 30, 2009 at 3:33 pm

Hey you are absolutely right. Having a custom domain is the way to go. First off, it is more professional and it will be easier for your customers, readers,etc. to remember. It also gives you more control, and if people do get one, dot com is the best way to go for personal branding.

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2 Jen of A2eatwrite September 30, 2009 at 5:07 pm

Congrats on the new domain name! I'm still working this one out myself. I have mine, but haven't updated yet.

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3 positively present September 30, 2009 at 6:26 pm

I really like having a custom name on my sites and I'm sure you'll like it too. I don't think there's any trouble with the feed though… I had no trouble with it on Google!

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4 Ellecubed September 30, 2009 at 7:06 pm

Congratulations on getting your own domain name. I think it is a great step.

I had no idea that Blogger had a process that allowed you to get your own domain name. I am going to look in to doing this tonight.

Thank you so very much for this post.

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5 Melita October 1, 2009 at 2:42 am

i like the change. more importantly i like why you did the change (ie how you explained your reasoning).

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