Monday 22 February 2016

40kaddict.uk


Just a little note, you may recall a good few months ago I was having difficulty accessing my blog [and a number of others, but not all] that featured 'games' or 'personal blogs] due to a change in IT security policy. Thankfully the Monkeychuka protocol was discovered when I noticed that when my blog was referenced by his blog it arrived via blogspot.co.nz. So a non-localised URL was able to bypass certain problems and I could respond to comments with a little more regularity.

That said the policy has changed once again, I'm not sure if it's adapting to me or it's just standard procedure so I had to find another solution. I have achieved this on two fronts, the first was to find a way to force blogger not to localise my website and it turns out that you can do this by typing in your URL as .blogspot.com/ncr This worked for me, it may never be an issue for others, it really depends what policies are in place by the 'powers that be'.


The other option, and slightly more drastic, was to actually buy a domain name. I'm not sure if this was a kneejerk response but it's also worked to cloak the blog under a shadow of 'respectability. Nick at theburningeye mentioned the importance of blog names in a recent post. Often you won't think of that when you first begin blogging, although my mate used to have wysiwyg-art.co.uk and told me it was a nightmare to explain over the phone.

I always felt I was ridiculously lucky to get 40kaddict and was really excited when 40kaddict.uk was only £1 on godaddy. For some reason it ended up at £3.50 at checkout but even so, aside from folk assuming it'll be .co.uk and not just .uk I'm really chuffed to have a dedicated URL. It may not be for everyone, but it's definitely a way to overcome a blog name that doesn't roll off the tongue and it may make other avenues of promotion available.


Anyway, it's a new step for the blog [although no plans for Wordpress just yet] it's a little fiddly integrating the redirect into my godaddy account and blogger so I can't honestly advise anyone how to do it as even with a couple of walkthroughs explaining it on blogger help I'm still not sure how I did it. However, I've done it now so I doubt I'll ever have to do it again.


6 comments:

  1. Well done on moving to the realm of dedicated URLs. Makes you feel like a proper blogger eh?

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    Replies
    1. It does actually, who knew something so insignificant would have such an impact.

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  2. I just use my phone. It allows me to access all sorts of vile websites at work. Free wi-fi too. Having said that, my works internet access doesn't have a problem with 40k addict. You must work for some evil corporation or the NSA.

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