Picking a domain name for a personal site
2026-04-04
The first domain I know for a fact that I have registered was registered way back in 2001-04-12. I know this because I still have this domain, and close relatives are still use it for email. It's our family name. I have since moved on to a more personal domain for my own email, and I've had plenty of other domains over the years.
Often when I register a domain, it's for a blog or a personal website. I want it to be short and memorable, yet not something that will easily identify me in real life (though 100% privacy is not necessarily the goal either). Something cool, techy, but not lame. Whenever I feel the urge, which is every 3-4 years, I will think about it for days, and then register it and put up a personal websites with my hobby projects. And then eventually what happens is I start to hate the name after a while, I don't like the contents on my website because it is stupid and boring and who wants to read about it anyway. So I remove the whole thing -- but then in another 3-4 years, the cycle repeats.
This time I've decided to stay with it. With age, I've come to realize a few things about my needs. Not just the name of the domain, but the purpose of the name and the purpose of it's contents. I have now done it again: I have registered "devshrine.net".
devshrine.net
I must confess that I don't love this domain name right now. But I never do. A name is never good enough. Most names you have to get used to -- if you are anything like me, anyway. They can grow on you and you can grow to like them. But I still think it is one of the better names I have picked. Some thoughts about it:
- I like that the gtld is .net. It's one of the original tld's and I feel that it is very classy and generic. There are some many others to choose from today -- each with their own purpose and style. Others I have considered where:
- .io, mostly for startups?
- .sh, kinda cool since it reminds you of the shell
- .dev, I've used this before since I am a developer, after all
- .xyz, cheap and generic -- but kinda ugly? At least to my eyes
- .me, I actually use this for my public email address linked to my real life identity
- .eu, very cheap if you live in the EU. But I would prefer something at bit more generic and neutral.
- I also like that .net is cheap. Around 5 USD. Few domains are that cheap.
- For some reasons, squatters haven't really attacked .net as much as .com. There are still plenty of cheap and short domains available.
So what's in the name: "devshrine"? Basically, I think of it as my place on the internet to "worship" development. Well, that's stretching it a bit far. I am in no way religious about it, but I like the word "shrine". It has a nice ring to it, and I want it to be a place where I can write thoughts and showcase projects in a field that I love, which is "software development". I won't necessarily limit it to that. Anything related, be it electronics or philosophy, will go in as well, I suspect. Time will tell.
The future of the blog
As I said, I've had plenty of blogs and domains in the previous 20 years, and I never keep at it for long. I start to hate the name I have choosen, the contents I have made. I feel like my small contribution to the "small web" is insignificant compared to others, so why keep it around?
What has changed this time is that I've started to realize that it doesn't really matter what others think. I enjoy the process. I enjoy writing. I don't expect to get any regular readers or to go "viral" with any blog post. This is just for me. I've made a promise to myself to keep this site around for my own good. I need someplace to put the stuff I care about and that I find interesting. But I need to let it grow and evolve, and don't abandon it just because my expectations are too high. And if I don't update it for six months or more? I won't stress it. It will still be there when I feel like continuing it again.
Thanks for reading this far. Feel free to share your thoughts with me by contacting me. No pressure.