This post assumes that your blog is SFW(Safe For Work) for obvious reasons.
Recently, I was writing my last day mail and I thought, why not put the link for my blog in the "be in touch" section!( never let go-by a chance to advertise your blog, even if it's an obituary :P)
But then, the reality dawned: my blog is hosted on the popular Google blogging service blogger.com and the office IT admin has blocked all popular blogging platforms on the office network. So my colleagues wouldn't be able to click on the link from office and nobody would care enough to go home and then check my blog. That meant lost opportunity to increase audience!
The solution: get a custom domain for my blog. So, now instead of going to http://abhinit06.blogspot.com, people can now visit my blog at www.technopersonal.in and my office IT admin won't block it (website blacklists in offices are generally sourced from some vendor whose job is to maintain the blacklist. I doubt they will have the resource and motivation to ever identify a harmless custom domain as a blog, unless, that is, your blog becomes too famous)
I bought the techopersonal.in domain from godaddy.com for Rs.225/-. A .com domain would cost more in the range of Rs.500/-
Next step is to set up your blog to be accessed form the new domain. A simple "custom domain for xxx_blog_service" will yield the procedure. Here are the links for some common blogging platforms:
https://support.google.com/blogger/topic/12451?hl=en&ref_topic=1697868
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/
http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_domains
Some words of caution:
Recently, I was writing my last day mail and I thought, why not put the link for my blog in the "be in touch" section!( never let go-by a chance to advertise your blog, even if it's an obituary :P)
But then, the reality dawned: my blog is hosted on the popular Google blogging service blogger.com and the office IT admin has blocked all popular blogging platforms on the office network. So my colleagues wouldn't be able to click on the link from office and nobody would care enough to go home and then check my blog. That meant lost opportunity to increase audience!
The solution: get a custom domain for my blog. So, now instead of going to http://abhinit06.blogspot.com, people can now visit my blog at www.technopersonal.in and my office IT admin won't block it (website blacklists in offices are generally sourced from some vendor whose job is to maintain the blacklist. I doubt they will have the resource and motivation to ever identify a harmless custom domain as a blog, unless, that is, your blog becomes too famous)
I bought the techopersonal.in domain from godaddy.com for Rs.225/-. A .com domain would cost more in the range of Rs.500/-
Next step is to set up your blog to be accessed form the new domain. A simple "custom domain for xxx_blog_service" will yield the procedure. Here are the links for some common blogging platforms:
https://support.google.com/blogger/topic/12451?hl=en&ref_topic=1697868
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/
http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_domains
Some words of caution:
- When you start using custom domain, the counters for fb Likes, Tweets etc for your posts might get reset
- wordpress.com charges a one-time fee for using custom domain. Blogger and Tumblr provide the service for free. Check with your service provider.
- You might want to use free domain names as custom domain for your blog. However, almost always these will be sub-domains (yourdomain.xxx.cc) and the IT admin would have blocked the naked domain(xxx.cc) itself. Such custom domain would be useless.
Great posts! Love all the tips for new bloggers. I’m just starting out and am obsessed with reading any article for help I can find.
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