When I first started blogging back in 2007, I searched for domain names but with a name like Andy Johnson, was unable to find anything related to my actual name. I had worked on a project at one point called “Just Alaska” and one day it occurred to me that “Just Andy” was not only available but worked quite well because I don’t have a middle name and am literally just Andy.
As a domain name, JustAndyBlog.com has served me well. When I learned that the .blog top level domain would become available in late 2016, I began to think that AndyJohnson.blog might actually be the perfect domain for my personal site since my name is easier to remember and .blog describes the purpose of the site.
Over the past few years, I’ve come to believe that the days when having the .com for your site name was critical are going to eventually be a part of internet history. A domain name with a specific extension like .blog or .photo replaces wasted characters like .com with names that describe the intent of the site.
My new domain names are implemented and the old links are setup to redirect. I’m now at AndyJohnson.blog for links to recent work and occasional articles on the adventurous life. I also post longer form photo stories at AndyJohnson.photo. The two sites are designed as similarly as their respective feature sets allow to give the sense of a single web presence across both sites.
After spending some time at Squarespace, I’m back to WordPress and looking forward to engaging here. Have you ever considered changing domain names for your site? Let me know and I would be happy to chat about my experience with this transition and what I learned along the way.
