Updating my web domain
It has been a while since I bought by domain. I never really did anything in terms of web hosting, although I tried a few times. There are also a couple of reasons why I want to change my domain registrar. That is why I have decided to resolve this issue once and for all. This post that you are reading, is the actualization of that decision.
Before touching on my website, let’s consider email. One thing I used my domain for was email, although I never put much thought in it. I used to provided email services with the hosting provider I signed up for. Switching providers means switching email providers. This has been a major reason why I have been slow to change things. It would be a pain to switch email providers, only for that change to come with some issue.
After a bunch of comparisons, I ended up choosing for Proton Mail. I can’t say for sure if it’s the best option out there, but I can provide my reasons for choosing them. The first is that, while I encourage the ability to self-host things, I don’t think that is preferable by default. Some may like to tinker, I prefer for a simple solution that doesn’t waste my time. I only tinker when I believe I can make some sort of meaningful progress in some way. And while I have many ideas that could improve email, I don’t have the means to achieve them. Due to prioritizing more achievable goals, I chose to go with something that works. Proton also has a suite of other tools that will come in handy. Such as a calendar, allowing me to get rid of yet one other Google service. And the pricing seems fair to me, although pricing was never the primary issue for me. All options I’ve considered were affordable and I would have chosen them if they provided me with what I need.
Web site
I’ve never done anything meaningful with my website. And I’ve always lacked a clear goal to use it for. After I decided to switch email, I also had to decide what to do with the website. Some thinking later I decided that I would turn it into a blog. I don’t think putting my resume on my website will yield much practical benefit. Also, I have a lot of thoughts I’d like to write somewhere. With this, I can write it down and link people whenever I have already cover something. I don’t expect to get followers or promote my site or anything. My primary goal is so I can link posts to others.
Again, I can provide so many reasons to write a custom solution. But this would again take too much time. So in the spirit of allowing me to solve more interesting problems, I decided to focus on simplicity. My solution, is GitHub Pages. This allows me to host a site without having to consider hosting. I also can use Git to manage to site, something I’m proficient at. After finding a Jekyll theme I liked, I set up the site.
There was one step I did choose to include. This is some work, but it’s relatively simple. I decided that I prefer to write my posts using AsciiDoc. So I wrote a tool called ad-blog, which can publish blogs from an AsciiDoc source. The way it does this is by using a standard way to store the source, which can then be exported. For now, it can be injected into a Jekyll site, which is done by converting it to HTML. It adds one step, but that is a small price to pay. An added bonus is that if I want to switch to something else, I just need to modify the tool.