I bought my first domain eleven years ago – for the Conspiracy X RPG. Over the years, I’ve purchased, hosted and transferred a number of domains. Back ‘in the day’, domain maintenance took a decent amount of time. If you wanted to transfer a domain from one person to the next, it often felt like brain surgery.
Times have changed.
For years, I hosted my ephealy.com domain with a small service back in New York. I used to have an online journal, what would now qualify as a blog I suppose, but took it down when I deployed to Iraq. Since then, I’ve only used my domain for email.
Last week, I decided to change that – to make an actual site where I can talk about all the nifty things I’ve been up to. To do that, I wanted to move my domain, but was concerned about the transfer. Sure, I don’t have a site right now, but I was worried about losing access to my email account for days or weeks. It had to be done, though, so last night I pulled the trigger.
Man, was a surprised, and pleasantly so. Not two hours later, my domain was transferred and my email was working at the new mail server. I think I may have experienced 20 minutes of down time in the middle of the night. That’s it.
I’m in awe of how far internet technology has come. Not only can I buy domains for a couple dollars (as opposed to the $30 I paid back in 1997), but the maintenance of these basic building blocks of internet communication is now fluid and easy.
What a difference a decade can make.