Moving to a New Domain: ScotttPhillips.com!

The blog is moving to a new domain: scottphillips.com! The previous owner let the domain expire and I had a chance to snap it up. I learned a lot about how the domain expiration process works, I’ll write up more about that on my next post. For now I wanted to let everyone know about the new domain. The current scott.phillips.name domain will last for the foreseeable future, at least a few years. But if you have this blog in your RSS reader you should switch the feed’s URL now.

Way back in 1996 when I was in high school I first had the idea to register my name as a domain name. I looked it up at the time with a whois search and it was available. But at that time domains were much more expensive, it was on the order of $30 a year. I’m not sure if there were cheaper alternatives available at the time or not, but I was not aware of any. That’s a fairly high price for a high school student with no job to register a domain name. I thought about it for a while and figured it would be worth it, even at the price. But by that time, just a few months later, someone else in Australia had picked up the domain. Presumably by another Scott Phillips…

Since then I’ve checked on the domain every so often. It’s never had a website hosted on it, the guy was just sitting on it. A few years later when I was out of high school and in college with a job I sent an email to the guy offering to buy it. I offered to buy it for $300 and he declined. I’d always imagined him laughing at me while writing the reply. I’ll never know.

When I got around to putting up my blog I needed a domain name and most of the Scott Phillips related names were already taken. Like the ones with dashes, or alternative extensions. However, there was one available on the relatively new “.name” registry. This registry is different because they sell third level names, so the registrar retains ownership of “phillips.name” and sells “scott.phillips.name”. This actually seemed like a cool idea it allows a lot more people to share the domain names separated by something that seemed natural.

The third level concept has not caught on (yet?). You will have to search high and low for a respected registrar that will even let you register it, the big ones don’t support it Network Solutions, Namecheap, Go Daddy, etc. Also, I’ve been suspicious of using the domain for my primary email address because I fear that someday in the future I won’t be able to renew the registration on the domain. That’s why I hopped at the chance to get the .com version!

P.S. If you are another Scott Phillips reading this and wanted the domain name as well, unfortunately there’s no good way to share domain names. Sorry.


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