Usually, it’s me who’s moving from one place to another. This time it’s my blog. Hopefully, the change of (web) address won’t cause any problems. The only difference will be the address shown in your browser. The blog is exactly the same.
I used to host this blog on a sub-domain of my site steve-calvert.co.uk. Now my Travel Write blog has its own domain. That means instead of reading pages at “blog.steve-calvert.co.uk”, you will be reading them at “TravelWrite.Guru”.
It took a little time setting things up but all the old pages now divert to the relevant pages on the new domain. Unfortunately, if you are reading this shortly after the transition you may see a few orange blocks on the page. I apologise for that. It may take a few days to a couple of weeks for the onsite advertising to catch up and display correctly.
Although I never planned for it to be that way, the new blog (old blog, new address) went live in the early hours of January 1st, 2020. Personally, I find that rather cool—a fresh start for the blog on the first day of the year.
I had planned to get things moving sooner but messing with scripts and codes while juggling sites between hosting companies can be pretty tricky.
This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. I’ve been planning on making the move for a long time. Due to the number of images I’ve uploaded to the blog, I was running out of space on my old hosting package. I have unlimited options for the main site, but not for its sub-domains.
That wasn’t the only issue. These days, sites need to have an SSL certificate. That’s what allows them to be “https” instead of “http”. It’s also what allows them to display that little padlock emblem in the address bar that indicates the site is secure. Sites that aren’t “secure” don’t do as well in the search results.
I write a l lot of posts that aim to help fellow travellers get around more easily and save money. They can’t do that if nobody ever reads them because Google penalizes them for not being https.
Some web hosting companies provide free SSL certificates via LetsEncrypt. The web hosting company I use for steve-calvert.co.uk does not. If you want a certificate you need to pay for every site (including sub-domains) every single year.
I’m not unduly worried about the other site at the moment. I’m more interested in Travel Write so I needed to make the blog secure. That made me seek out a better hosting company that does offer free SSL certificates via LetsEncrypt. I chose DreamHost and, so far, I’m very impressed. I’ll probably move my other sites over to the company later in the year.
So, why the f@%k did I choose to go with a “.guru” domain?
Although I’ve done quite a lot of travelling and lived in many European countries, I don’t claim to be a travel guru. A “guru” blog was not my first choice.
My original idea was to try and get TravelWrite.com. The domain name would have cost me over €3000. My second choice was TravelWrite.net. That would have cost me more than €300. Other options, such as “.info” and “.site” were a lot cheaper but didn’t seem right so I went with “.guru” instead. It cost me less than €5.
Anyway, that’s the story behind this blog domain. The main thing is there now plenty of room for the site to grow and Google can’t penalize me in the search engine results due to the lack of a padlock emblem in the address bar.
Apart from being the first post on the new domain, this is also my first post of 2020 so I’d like to wish you a Happy New Year.
