2019-09-09-getting-a-domain.md (2529B) - raw

      1 <!-- title: Getting my own domain name -->
      2 <!-- slug: getting-a-domain -->
      3 <!-- categories: Decentralization, Personal domain -->
      4 <!-- date: 2019-09-09T00:00:00Z -->
      5 <!-- lastmod: 2020-03-01T00:00:00Z -->
      6 
      7 After thinking about getting my own domain name for a while and letting the
      8 thought rest for a couple of months, I finally bought one. It is a very easy and
      9 inexpensive process, and I am happy I did it. The original idea was to set up my
     10 email with it, so I could change my email provider without changing the address
     11 (I am in the process of changing my provider, and it takes a lot of effort), but
     12 having a domain name opens a world of opportunities.
     13 
     14 ***
     15 
     16 Although I had known about how to get a domain for a while, I didn't have much
     17 experience on which companies were "better" or "worse" (since I only needed a
     18 domain but no hosting, I am not sure why a company could give me a more
     19 appealing offer, since prices are the same in all websites). I finally decided
     20 to go with [Gandi.net][g] because a known site uses it, I had heard about it on
     21 the [Fediverse][f], and it looked like a good and reliable company. The hardest
     22 part was figuring out which domain I wanted, once that was decided, buying it
     23 took around 5 minutes.
     24 
     25 Since I had never seen a DNS record before, configuring my email provider was a
     26 little trickier. My provider gave me some lines to copy and paste into the
     27 record, but they needed some modification in order to work, so it took me a
     28 little while to figure it out. The next part was setting a landing page for my
     29 domain: if someone saw my email address and wanted to check what
     30 [obenedito.org][org] was all about, I didn't want them to get a 404. So I
     31 designed a very simple page with my name and a link to my email address and one
     32 to my GitLab account. Since I don't have a home server or a VPS, I decided to
     33 host my page on GitLab (basically because it's free and I don't need a dynamic
     34 website). I once again had some trouble setting up the GitLab custom domain—the
     35 lines I was given to add to the record weren't the ones I actually needed to
     36 add, so that took a bit to figure out as well.
     37 
     38 I still have a lot to learn about how DNS records work (for instance the
     39 difference between a type A or CNAME entry), but, for now, it works just fine.
     40 
     41 *Edit*: My personal domain has been moved to [oscarbenedito.com][com].
     42 
     43 
     44 [g]: <https://www.gandi.net> "Gandi"
     45 [f]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse> "Fediverse — Wikipedia"
     46 [org]: <https://obenedito.org>
     47 [com]: <https://oscarbenedito.com>