I finally went and did it - I got my custom domain (www.three10.io) to host my personal website. I was in two minds, but there were a few reasons that pushed me towards hosting myself on a custom domain.
- I own my content - I learnt this the hard way when the site hosting my first blog (somewhere in 2003 / 2004 I think) shuttered down. I had absolutely no backups, and everything I wrote was pretty much gone. I re-started the blog in 2007 on Google Blogs (a.k.a Blogger), but the fear of losing content was always looming. So, a few years back, I jumped on to GitLab pages and static site generation. Now, All of my pages / content reside on my device, synced to GitLab via Git (what else :D). I don’t have any fear of losing content now.
- Building out my brand - I’ve had the “310” moniker for a while now, across the web, so it made sense to build out a custom site name for myself that was an extension of my presence online. I could have gone for a more pedestrian “.net” TLD, but the “.io” TLD was too cool (and I paid a premium). I’m hoping this becomes more useful going forward.
- A more professional online presence - Right now, the top level URL points directly to the blog, but I will be pushing out updates frequently to build this out into a proper website. I have also nailed down the workflows to post content from pretty much all devices I own (including my phone), so updates to the blog should be regular.
If you’ve stopped by to read (now, or anytime in the past), thank you for the support - please spread the content if you find it useful.