BlawgCoop Welcomes Divine Angst!

After a bit of template magic to make her new home her own, stellar 0L Divine Angst has migrated her blog to her own domain! Check it out at divineangst.com. Congrtulations, DA! (And everyone else, don't forget to update your links!) For now, when you go to divineangst.com you'll find that you actually end up at a blawgcoop url. Why? Because DA had the ingenious idea of getting her own domain, but hosting her files w/blawgcoop! Barring unforeseen difficulties, DA can eventually hide the redirect so that users who go to divineangst.com will never know they're actually being served files from the blawgcoop server. This is such a neat little innovation that I'd like to invite anyone interested in moving or starting a legally-related blog to do the same thing. The “get your own domain but host with blawgcoop” plan offers the following advantages:

1. You secure your own domain name so if you ever decide to host your blawg yourself, you've got the domain you want.
2. Readers will be able to find your blawg easily—you can make the URL match the name of the blawg.
3. You don't have to pay the $5-$10/month it would cost to host the domain somewhere. If you register somewhere like GoDaddy.com you'll get free forwarding (and “masking” so that users won't see the foward) with your domain registration for only $8/yr.*
4. You don't have to hassle with setting up and maintaining your own MT or WordPress installation, but you get all the benefits of MT or WordPress.
5. You can import your entries from an existing blawg to your new blawgcoop-hosted blawg so you'll have everything in one place. If you ever decide to fully host your own blawg yourself, MT makes such a move relatively easy. (I'm not sure about the migration features of WordPress but I'm sure we could figure it out.)
6. Bottom line: Your total annual bill for your own MT or WordPress blawg at your own, custom URL will be $13. Per year. ($8 for your domain registration, $5 to host at blawgcoop.)

That's a pretty good deal if you've been wanting to move away from blogspot or some other free service.** (For the sake of comparison, it's hard to find web hosting anywhere for less than $5/month.) Something to keep in mind, anyway. So thanks to DA for coming up with this slick idea, and congratulations on your new home! * If anyone knows of a quality domain registrar that would be better than GoDaddy for these purposes, please share. My own host, Dreamhost, will do it, but they charge more. ** It's possible there are drawbacks to this plan that neither DA nor I recognized. If you see any, please share them with us so any potential future users will understand the pros and cons.

Posted January 14, 2005 07:44 AM | life generally