This is why I always use custom domains
So tonight I changed the name of this posterous blog. If you're reading this, then you probably read that too.
I always cringe when I see people using a service's domain name when they don't have to, like thisname.wordpres.com, thatname.blogger.com, or http://leoville.posterous.com, etc.
These people have no control over their traffic. While it is doubtful that those services could go under, it could happen. At the very least, someday they might want to change their domain names, like I did. In either case all the SEO, subscribers, traffic, etc. would disappear.
I changed domains from snaps.jangro.com to jangro.me. Instead of losing all the links and search engine rankings on those old urls, I simply hosted snaps.jangro.com somewhere else and redirect all the old URLs to the new equivalent URLs with a really simple .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} snaps [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://jangro.me/$1 [L,R=301]
Try it. See? http://snaps.jangro.com/skiing-at-mt-wachusett-today
Now all the old posts get redirected to the new domain. Google's happy. People who have linked are happy. I'm happy.
All of these services allow you to use your own domain to point to their services. It is easy. So why do anything else?
