The Real Blogger Status

One hot Internet topic, these days, involves specialised ("vanity") domains. The hot names seem to change, by the week. This week, enom is hyping ".family", ".live", ".rocks", and ".social" . Other registrars may have other recommendations. The blog Address (Name) is a key blog identity element , in a well designed blog. It's visible both to people, and to search engine crawlers. The requirement that addresses must be unique is a supposed benefit of vanity top level domains - but vanity TLDs, alone, will not provide blog uniqueness. There will always be competition for some names, in any useful Top Level Domain.

People who speak (read / write) languages, that do not use Roman character sets, need to publish in their native language - and the Internet now supports that need . Some registrars will register domains which use non Roman character sets, in the URL. Not all Internet services will accept non Roman characters, however. My favourite online DNS diagnostic services, DigWebInterface , and intoDNS , and Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer , only use ASCII. One cannot use non ASCII ("non Roman") characters, with either service.

We see the question, about relative value of a custom domain, periodically in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . Does a custom URL actually have value, over a BlogSpot URL? Some people wonder if a custom URL isn't similar to a custom ("vanity") license plate, for your car. Personally, I can think of a few reasons why a custom domain might be more valuable, for your Blogger blog. Some people believe that having your own domain makes your blog more individual and interesting - and they may be more likely to visit your blog when presented to them, in a search list. It may be easier for you to get the relevant domain of your choice, than the relevant BlogSpot subdomain. A properly chosen domain URL may be easier for people to remember, than a BlogSpot URL. A domain is yours, to control - better than sharing the "blogspot.com" with millions of other blogs.

The ability to publish a Blogger blog to a non BlogSpot URL is becoming a known - and desired - option for many bloggers. And with the retiring of FTP Publishing, many bloggers are turning to Custom Domain Publishing. Not everybody is satisfied with the TLD choice of ""com", "net", "info", "org", or "biz"", though. Some folks would like to publish to a "vanity" TLD, like ".me", ".tv", or ".us". Others would like the country relevant TLD of their residence, like ".au", ".de", or ".in". And I have seen one or two queries about using a ".gov" TLD. Custom domains will support use of any properly registered domain that you can "buy". The limitation is with the "Buy a Domain" wizard , which lets you select only a ".biz", ".com", ".info", ".net", or "org" generic Top Level Domai...