New Blog Address
February 6, 2009
This post is going to be stickied for a few days, please scroll down for latest posts.
I have taken the plunge and bought the domain name “americaswatchtower”, wordpress is supposed to automatically redirect to this new address so you shouldn’t have to update your links or bookmarks. But you may want to just in case.
Of course if wordpress isn’t redirecting the address than you are not reading this post anyway.
My blog address has bothered me for quite some time but I was always afraid to change it fearing that something would go wrong. Today I held my breath and jumped in. I finally have a blog address that reflects the name of my blog.
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America's Watchtower 
S. I’m going to miss MrPinkEyes..but love your new blog address and I did get automatically redirected without any problem
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Mr. Pink Eyes, Congratulations on taking the hosted domain plunge. I got here by typing your address in the address bar, so I don’t know if that’s why it didn’t redirect, or if it is not redirecting at all. A few pointers. 3 years ago, one week from today, I moved from a blogger domain to one of my own, so I have a little experience abandoning an old site in favor of a new one.
There will be a period of adjustment. Devout readers will catch on quickly, so that is what makes the easiest transition. However, you will lose all your ability to pick up search traffic, as Google sees the new domain as, well, a new domain. First thing to do, edit this blog to point a link at the new domain. That coupled with readers changing their blogrolls will be a big help in getting some instant trust from search engines.
If any of the blogrolls you belong to are still actively kept, get your listing changed. Ones that aren’t maintained, you can’t do anything about. Oh well, that’s life. The biggest thing, no matter what you do, DO NOT DELETE THIS SITE. It still holds a lot of power for boosting the ranking of everything you have linked to in the past.
Other than that, in a few months, you will not even notice the difference from if you had been at your own domain all along. This effect diminishes even more as more time goes by. Just think, if 3 years ago I hadn’t had the guts to make the change, I wouldn’t now have a well established, 3 year old domain.
If you have any needs in making the transition, like how to FTP, install wordpress, add plugins, want suggestions on good plugins to use, or any other basic technical issue, feel free to hit me up for some advice. I’m pretty competent at the whole owning my own domain now.
Just be careful. You might become addicted to buying and hosting domains. I have like a dozen now. The first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem. I guess I haven’t taken that first step yet.
Good luck. I’ll be editing my feed soon as I jump over to the new place.
PS, contact me on the radioactiveliberty.com contact page if you want some help.
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Oh wait, I WAS redirected and just didn’t realize it. Cool.
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Fiar, I guess it isn’t a total jump into the hosted domain plunge, I paid for the wordpress upgrade so my blog is still hosted on wordpress I just lose the wordpress.com part of the name while also getting a name that better suits the name of the blog. Maybe my next challenge will be to host a blog that I have total control over. That sounds a little scary though.
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Thanks for the information Fiar, I was wondering about the search engines. I haven’t had a chance to submit the new address to to them yet. And thanks for the offer.
Mooks, Mr Pink Eyes will still be here, just the blog address has changed.
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Updated the blogroll.
One day, I’ll make the same jump from a free server with a sub-domain. But my desired name has already been taken – nuts!
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Thanks Tom.
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Congradulations!!!
It works.
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Thank you.
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