On Moving to Johnathan.org

The idea of moving to a first-name.tld-type domain had been on my mind for quite a while. I settled on johnathan.org after much internal deliberation and stomaching with the fact that it wasn’t available for just a handful of dollars a year. I ended up buying the domain from a private party a few weeks ago, and now that the dust is settled, I feel comforatable explaining my reasons behind the change.

.ly: Short But not Sweet

I’ve always had mixed feelings about purchasing a domain name from Libya. As a country, they’re not exactly known for open Internet practices so I bought my previous domain (john.ly) knowing that there’s a non-zero possibility that it might be pulled out from under me at any time for whatever reason. Not knowing where my money was ultimately going—given the odds the Libyan government had a significant hand in running the registry—was enough for me to consider an alternative. Coming to this conclusion sucked, though, because I was super excited when I bit the bullet and bought john.ly.

Molding the Personal Brand

For whatever reason, my online nerd brand needed some improvement and I’ve always been a fan of early-to-mid 2000s Internet and the entire IndieWeb movement. Creating a home online without un-necessary siloing has always been a goal and I felt I could finally carve my place on the Internet for realzies. I also own johnathanlyman.com, jlyman.net, and lymandigital.net, so I could have used any one of those, but I opted not to since they either felt too long or not obvious enough.

Plus, having a .org address felt like it could hit home that my site isn’t one I plan on turning into a business or is any kind of commercial property. It’s barebones, loads pretty quickly, and there’s minimal tracking. One thing left on my domain todo list is see if I can get a hold of the non-double-H version of my name, too (jonathan.org) and have it redirect to here. It’d make life infinitely more simple when telling people and I don’t have to worry about the misspelling it. I could take it farther and round up other common spellings, but I think we’re entering cost territory I’m not quite comfortable with, yet.

Overall, I’ve felt comfortable with the conversion and I think it’ll be something I hold onto for a while. I’ve changed domain names every couple years in the past largely because I never really felt like it was my true online home. This feels like the real deal.