I, on the other hand, don’t have a domain: I’ve tried to get one, but I guess my technical ability goes that far. I can administer the remote database, customize themes and plugins, and set permissions, but not get a domain. Gasp! Though I don’t have a domain, I have pretty good control of my blog. I use WordPress and I don’t think I’d have more control if I were able to get a domain.

I recommend everyone do the same – I even put aside my niece’s name last year when she was born.

But I’ve certainly gathered more readers over here. It seems to be paying off.

Blessings to all of you at WordPress!

http://www.renaebrumbaugh.com

Now, maybe those people, when their names are as big as Seth’s, should hire someone to do that, but really, it’s no big deal…

And what’s this about names staying the same? You’re obviously speaking from a male perspective because women often anticipate name changes.

Besides, we can all change our names if we want. It’s just a simple, legal process. I was thinking of changing my legal name to something really plain, like Chris Johnson. What do you think?

We both started our blogs in 2002, you in January and me in June. I switched my domain from photomatt.net to ma.tt earlier this week, and the good news is that it’s not that bad. I’m 99% sure that Typepad does the proper 301 redirects. (I’ll double-check that.) You don’t lose any traffic because everyone going to your old domain in search results (or links) is just redirected. The listed Pagerank takes about 1-2 weeks to transfer to the new domain, but like I said earlier you don’t lose any traffic during that time, because the old URLs still work.

Even though you’ve been blogging for many years I hope that that there are more years ahead of your blog than behind it, so it’s a good long-term investment. When all else changes, your name stays the same.

many years later, the cost of switching in terms of links is just too high. I’ve got literally hundreds of thousands of links out there in various search engines, and it’s just too painful

my mistake

the good news is that the cost of being wrong is tiny. there are very few negative side effects.

Yes, nearly all our largest blogs have their own domain, which is why a lot of our traffic isn’t counted by Alexa/Comscore.

Like I said, it isn’t about platform (though who wouldn’t want Seth on theirs) but just about building your house on a solid foundation, which I believe you can do equally well on either platform.