So I got hold of a domain that shows my exact full name. I thought it would be useful for showing up as “professional” when working in IT and sending resumes.
I got some mail forwarded using the domain registrar. I also made a small static website, which only has hello world for now but soon will get the contents filled up.
But then… what? I suppose I can host anything I want, but then there’s the whole “real name - gotta look professional” aspect that makes me weary of hosting a Lemmy instance, for example, when the domain without my name attached wouldn’t.
I suppose having personal domains were cool in the 90s where people were barely learning about “the internets”. Not so anymore?
Is there a usefulness in having a domain name with your real name attached on this age?
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It’s good for email and personal sites (those aren’t dead, but they’re more popular for people that either write a lot or are self-employed). I’d only use a personal domain for self hosted apps if the users are just you and your family.
For something like hosting Lemmy, with users you don’t know, I wouldn’t use the same domain as where you host your other personal stuff, even if it’s not your name.
Use a second domain for your less professional stuff?
It is a bit of gimic though, and I suspect rather than coming across as professional on your resume, it will probably be more of a “huh, cool” kinda thing?
Yeah, that’s what happens, something cool but that’s it. It would be nice if l could use it for something else other than a glorified online resume.
I also bought a cheap domain for experimenting around, so that’s where all my “not so professional” stuff goes.
I have issues where companies won’t let me register because ‘you can’t have your last name as the @lastname’. They don’t trust it or whatever…I dunno
They have no issues trying to mail me their spam fliers but won’t let me use it to communicate with them. Kinda fucky…but yes it is more of a that’s cool moment.
Lol, I often get a lot of confirmations on if my email address is right whenever I am in contact with any customer service… I use a catch-all on lastname[dot]com.
“Is your email really ‘nameofservice@lastname•com’?”
Glad to see I’m not the only one doing this. It definitely leads to a lot of small talk about my email domain, but I’ve never run into a situation yet where I couldn’t sign up for something. My personal favorite is when reluctantly providing an email for something I don’t care about I can spout out something like “blockthishottrash@mydomain.tld”. That’s lead to some fun reactions.
I’ve run into services that won’t let you use the name of their service in your email. They assume it’s is their email because they don’t look for
.*@servicename\.com$they look for.*servicename.*.
I use a “real name” domain. My last name ends in the letters “in”, so I bought a
.indomain, such that the domain name is my last name with a dot in it.Can’t honestly recommend that approach. It’s a cute gimmick, but when non-technical people ask for your email address and it doesn’t end in a TLD they recognize, their heads explode. I usually give out my gmail address.
There are multiple of us! I did the exact same thing, except for using my own name. Mine ends in .re of Réunion. I think it’s fun so I’m keeping it.
For sharing it offline I have a big text widget on my phone. They usually get it if they can read it, but not if I spell it out.
Personally I try not to attach my real name or picture to anything that isn’t related to a job interview or my current employment. I’m planning to buy my realname domain, because I know it’s free and it probably always will be. The only thing that I’ll use it for is professional email, as I slowly phase out google.
I have a handful of other domains for fun stuff, which reveal nothing about me.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System IP Internet Protocol SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #283 for this sub, first seen 15th Nov 2023, 13:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I host some private stuff on mine, hidden behind an authentication service that is. But because I just use a wildcard no-one can really tell what I have hosted - the same login page occurs for every subdomain, regardless of whether it’s actually wired up to something.
That doesn’t help with services you wish to make semi-public (like a lemmy instance) though.
Interested in learning about the wildcard. How do you set up the DNS to accept that?
I’m using cloudflare as my DNS, and it’s literally just:
- Create an A record.
- Set the name to “*” (without quotes)
- Set the IP to the appropriate server
- You may want to untick the proxy, depending on what you’re hosting. If it’s web stuff only it’s fine, but if you’re doing anything else as well it’ll get in the way.
On the letsencrypt side, it’s pretty similar. Create a certificate with
doman.nameand*.domain.name(if you want them to share a cert) and you’re off.
