domains for dummies

Title:	domains for dummies
Tags:	brain trust, internet
Date:	2017-02-19 @ 17:07
Security:	public

Can you believe that I've been online since the ARPAnet and yet, in 2017, do not know the nuts and bolts of domain-name management? Perhaps you, dear reader, will point me toward the clues, and I promise not to be offended that you're quietly snickering there.

The recent LJ upheaval is far from the first signal that really, if you care about durable links, you need to own your own domain, but it's the one that's finally gotten through to me. Instead of relying on Livejournal or Dreamwidth or Medium or whomever else to provide a durable path to my stuff, I ought to control that, so if a service goes belly-up, the old, public URLs still work (with content migrated elsewhere).

What (I think) I would like (please tell me if this is flawed): some domain -- I'll use cellio.org as my example, though that one is taken so I'll need another -- where www.cellio.org points to my ISP-provided web content (which I can easily edit), blog.cellio.org points to my DW journal, medium.cellio.org points to my Medium page, and I can set up other redirects like that as needed. So I can't do anything about links that are already out there, but I can give out better URLs for future stuff (stop the bleeding, in other words). Bonus points if the durable URL stays in the URL bar instead of being rewritten (unlike pobox.com redirects), but that might be hard.

I do not want to run my own web server.

Now I already pay pobox.com for, among things, URL redirection, but it's to a single destination. And it's not at the domain level -- www.pobox.com/~cellio redirects to my ISP-provided web space. It'd be ok, though a little kludgy, if I could manufacture URLs like www.pobox.com/~cellio/blog that do what I described above, but unless there's something I can drop into my own web space, without requiring access to my ISP's web server, I don't think I can do that. Also, this leaves me dependent on pobox.com; owning my own domain sounds like a better idea. pobox.com has been solidly reliable for 20+ years, but what about the next 20?

I understand that I need to (a) buy a domain and (b) host it somewhere, and if I were running my own server then (b) would apparently be straightforward, but I don't know how to do that in this world of distributed stuff and redirects. Also, I'm not really clear on how to do (a) correctly (reliably, at reasonable cost, etc).

So, err, is this a reasonable thing to want to do and, if so, what should I do to make it happen?

Originally posted at http://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2017/02/19/domains.html.

comments there. Reply there (preferred) or here.

:: :: Flag :: 3 replies :: Reply

Title:	Untitled
Author:	vonstrassburg
Date:	2017-02-20 05:49 (UTC)
Status:

You buy a domain.

You don't host the domain but you buy, or obtain for free, DNS hosting for it. I would recommend PointHQ -- pointhq.com

Then you fill in a bunch of DNS records. You need one A record for every site (e.g. blog.cellio.com or www.cellio.com) and you need one MX record for the mail server.

Then, since you said you don't want to run your own web server, you need to find organisations or people who will run it for you. wordpress.org allows you to set up a site and point your A record to some IP address so that you can have www.cellio.org on wordpress' servers -- it costs a bit extra to do that so you may have to have a monthly plan of some kind.

As far as getting blog.cellio.org to point to DW, you have to ask DW if they allow that, and what it will cost. They have to configure their servers to handle it so expect there at least to be some setup fee and a monthly fee.

If cellio.org is taken what about something like cellio.me or cellio.name?

:: Thread :: Reply

Title:	Untitled
Author:	vonstrassburg
Date:	2017-02-20 05:51 (UTC)
Status:

More on DNS: Your domain is bought from a registrar. That registrar will allow you to delegate your DNS. PointHQ will tell you what NS records to use once you set up an account there (it's free for one domain). Some registrars will host your DNS for you, don't do that, get it delegated.

Adding A records and MX records to your DNS is done through a simple web interface at PointHQ. The A records you have to add will be told to you by the site hosting your blog or website, or whatever. If you want to have email you will be told what MX records to add by the email host. You can use google to host your email or you can use one of the smaller operators like 25mail.st

:: Thread :: Parent :: Reply

Title:	Untitled
Author:	cellio
Date:	2017-02-20 21:55 (UTC)
Status:

Thanks for the info! And, it turned out, while cellio.org was taken last I checked (a few weeks ago), it was available last night. Now it's not. :-)

And thanks in particular for the warning to separate registrar and hosting instead of putting all the eggs on one basket. Now that you mention it, that does seem risky.

:: Thread :: Parent :: Reply