Monday, August 13, 2012

No I'm Not Dead

Yeah it's been almost three weeks, but don't worry, I'm still around. Life has just gotten really busy (Work, getting ready for school, a new g/f). But it's been fun. Catstache is on it's way, we're halfway through designing and building our first website. (Which I'll talk about more later).

The main topic of this post is about online presence. My own specifically. My full name is Andrew Z Mercer. So how do I go about starting a personal website about myself? I could choose andrewzmercer.com. That's a bit long. andrewmercer.com, andymercer.com, azmercer, amercer.com. So many to choose from. Plus, several are already taken.

The best bet is to wait until there's a good deal on cheap domain names, and then grab them all, and have 'em auto forward to the one I want to use primarily. So I'd pick andrewmercer.com. Then if someone goes to andymercer.com, they land on my website at andrewmercer.com.

The biggest problem is as mentioned above, the best ones are already taken. But hardly used well. AndyMercer.com for example is a single page in dedication to another Andy Mercer, who died in '08. AndrewMercer.com is a blank white page. The latter especially, isn't really being used. The key then, is just grab what is available now, and then over the next few years be watchful and when something pops up, grab it too. URLs are pretty cheap to maintain.