Domain transition
Filed under Site News on January 27, 2009
Tagged: blogs, domains, Pens and Swords
I launched the Pens & Swords blog on kameronmf.com almost five years ago. The Men with Pens provided me with a free site critique last summer after I relaunched the blog. One result of that feedback was the purchase of the pensandswords.com domain, which I’ve been using as a redirect.
That’s about to change.
The registration for kameronmf.com will expire in a couple more months, and I’ve decided not to renew. The domain had personal significance for me, being a combination of my first name and the first letters of my middle and last names. It’s a common convention I use for email addresses and usernames.
It doesn’t hold the same significance for anybody else. People trying to find me online search for my first name or first and last name. I include my middle initial in most bylines.
So why didn’t I just buy kameronfranklin.com? Well, I started this blog using Blogger. My username was “kameronmf” and also used that for the Blogspot vanity URL. When I purchased my own domain, I just carried it over.
The blog has always been called Pens & Swords, however. That name has multiple layers of significance, and is a much more common search term. I was extremely lucky the domain was available. And now that I have it, I’m going to take full advantage of it. Starting February 1st, this site will be fully hosted on www.pensandswords.com, and www.kameronmf.com will become a redirect. Then on March 1st, www.kameronmf.com will disappear.
This also means that my email address is changing. Any address associated with the kameronmf.com domain will cease to function. I’ve already made the change on the Contact Kameron page. Please be sure to update your address books.
Google is transitioning Feedburner feeds, so the RSS feed for the site may change as well. I’ll make a separate announcement at that time. If you have www.kameronmf.com bookmarked, or link to it in a blogroll, you’ll need to update those.
Everything should go smoothly. I’ll make the transition over the weekend in order to avoid as much disruption as possible. I appreciate your patience during the process and please let me know if you encounter any difficulties.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Woot! I’m very, very glad to see this. It was a damned cool name and we were honestly afraid someone would buy it up after seeing it mentioned.
Wield it in good health.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I think it’ll work out just fine.
While Ashlock.org remains my site identity, I bought up jefflasala.com and redirected it anyway, because you never know when you might regret not having it? I listed jefflasala.com in my author page in The Darkwood Mask, since that makes more sense than ashlock.org, which no one would understand.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Congrats! And nice banner you’ve got there too. Onward and upward!