When I returned to the blogging scene at the beginning of this year¹, I wanted to reconnect with my old blogging friends from two years ago. However, my search for old “affiliates”² proved to be futile. Many of them had quit the blogging scene, but even more had changed their URLs so that I didn’t/couldn’t know where to find them at their new location.

I’ve never really understood the compulsion to change one’s blog URL repeatedly every several months. I’ve only had three URLs for my blog: the first one expired when I stopped blogging, the second one was a subdomain on another domain I own, and the third one is my current URL, breakthesky.net. I do not plan on changing my blog URL anytime soon, if at all. Not only is it a hassle to move databases and files around whenever there is a domain change, but I think that a URL is part of every blogger’s online identity. I associate URLs with individual bloggers more than I do with a blogger’s name, mainly because the URL is the “face” of the blogger. While there are multiple names like Amanda or Sarah or Ben online, there is only ever one URL like breakthesky.net!

I can’t keep up with bloggers that change their domain names repeatedly. I understand a change once in a while may be necessary, whether it be for personal or monetary reasons, but moving a blog around just because one got tired of a domain name that has only been used for a month makes no sense to me. It’s hassle for the blogger to move things around, and an even bigger hassle for visitors who need to update URLs, bookmarks, and RSS feed subscriptions. Sooner or later, after repeated moves in a short amount of time, visitors aren’t going to continue keeping track of a blogger’s digital trail in the blogosphere. This is why constantly changing one’s blog URL makes no sense to me: doesn’t every blogger want readers? And if so, then why do so many insist on changing their URLs willy-nilly just for the sake of doing so and without any particular reason?

1. I first entered the blogging scene in late 2005/early 2006. I ended up closing that blog in early 2007 when the domain expired as I had registered the domain with a previous host (if only I had known better than to do that!) and didn’t return to blogging until early 2009. [↩]
2. I use the quotation marks when talking about affiliates because blogs don’t have them, at least not in the way affiliation is supposed to work. To quote Jem, who explained it best in one of her unrequested reviews: “…affiliating websites pre-dates personal sites and the need to pat one another on the back for a job well done each time a person blogs. Affiliation is for driving relevant traffic and backlinks, plain and simple.” [↩]

Tags: domains, opinions