Google « Chris Blackwell's Domain

Changing Domains & Taking the SEO Bullet

Monday, May 17th, 2010

For the last few years I have been hosting my personal website and email on the domain ChrisBlackwell.org. I actually ended up moving to that domain from my original longer domain theChrisBlackwell.com. I originally registered that domain because I was obsessed with having to use a .com domain for my website.

After a while I noticed that a lot of people were using .org for their personal websites, and since I could get ChrisBlackwell.org and drop “the” from the domain, I switched over. I never really liked the .org domain. After all, I’m not an organization or a non-profit. It also never really fit how I view the web in the future, as a domain-less area, where what’s in the domain doesn’t really matter.

I decided last month to register a couple of name based domains, meaning domains that specifically target being used for personal websites and vCards. I registered both ChrisBlackwell.me and ChrisBlackwell.name. While the ChrisBlackwell.name domain really specifies that it is meant to be used for personal websites, I don’t really like 4 digit TLDs. After pondering on this for a month, and figuring out what the SEO implications might be, I made the switch and now everything is moved over to ChrisBlackwell.me.

SEO Problems and Why I Don’t Care

The biggest problem with moving your website to a different domain is losing all your links and Google juice that you have spent years building up. Most web developers know we can fix that problem with a single line in a .htaccess file hosted on the old domain:

Redirect 301 / http://new-domain.tld

The much bigger problem I have is with domain age and relevance. My old domain (chrisblackwell.org) has been registered for several years, and in the eyes of Google is a trusted site. My new domain (chrisblackwell.me) has only been registered for a month and a half, and in the eyes of Google, doesn’t have a lot of history. While I’m hoping that having the old domain forward over will carry forward some of that trust, I can’t be certain of that.

The other problem, and this is only in theory, is that Google trusts the main three top level domains the most (.com, .net and .org). All the other domains like .name, .biz, .info, and maybe .me don’t get as much credibility as their higher level counterparts. This is a problem I think needs to go away as soon as possible. The notion that you have to have a top level domain to get good search engine rankings has led people to come up with either ridiculously long domain names, or ridiculously sounding company names.

I’m over it! I don’t care about the SEO implications because I believe this is the right thing to do. This website has never been about making everything 100 percent perfect, or I wouldn’t have built it in HTML5 and CSS3. This website is about testing new waters, being on the leading edge, and finding out how we can all make this a better Internet for everyone.

I’d really like to hear what you think. Did I make the right move, or am I being foolish? Do you trust top level domains more, or do you think they just don’t matter anymore?

Tags: Domains, Google, htaccess, SEO, vCards, Web Standards
Posted in Web Development | 2 Comments »

My Love Affair with Google Chrome

Friday, January 8th, 2010

I have loved FireFox for years, but lately I have strayed. Google recently released Google Chrome for Mac (Beta) and as a good web developer I downloaded it for testing purposes. I quickly found myself loving the speed and simplistic approach of Google Chrome and wishing that it could be my everyday browser.

The affair with Chrome has left me shaky and unsettled. I thought I loved FireFox and that just about nothing they could do would make me leave them. After some thought, I realized it’s not so much what FireFox was doing that was causing the affair, but what Chrome is doing for me that FireFox has yet to do.

Things I love about Chrome

Integrated address bar & search bar is my favorite feature and seems so intuitive. I think the only reason that this has not changed on all browsers is the fear that people won’t understand that they can search or type an address into the same field. While I understand the possible worry, I think the fear is unfounded and that people would adapt. I’d love to see this feature in FireFox 4.

Tabs on the top is a beautiful way to get your tabs out of your way. This was my favorite feature of the Safari 4 Beta, but when Safari 4 was officially launched, this feature was removed. I can’t think of too many useful advantages of having the tabs on the top versus below the address bar, but I just seemed to like it and wish this was an option on all my browsers.

Speed, speed, and more speed is what Chrome is all about. Like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, I feel the need for speed and can’t get enough of it. When I first heard that Chrome was so much faster then FireFox, I didn’t really believe it. After all, how fast can a browser really be? Apparently, very fast!

I found Chrome to be much faster at loading pages, especially pages that have a lot of JavaScript on them. My FireFox use to really slow down if I was jumping through more then 100 unread items in Google Reader, but Chrome doesn’t even hiccup. I have also seen vast speed improvments in Gmail and labeling and moving email around is faster then ever.

Things I hate about Chrome

Lack of extensions is my biggest problem with Chrome. As I web developer I depend largely on browser testing and getting all my applications and websites to function correctly as quickly as possible. Tools like FireBug and Web Developer Toolbar on FireFox help me track down bugs and work with fixes much quicker then I could ever do if I had to refresh a webpage every time I made a change.

While Chrome has added extension support on the PC and Linux versions, it is still only for the beta releases, and they have yet to add extension support for the Mac version. Once Google has added extensions to all versions of the browser, I need some big extension developers to jump aboard before I can fully move.

The Bookmark Manager in Google Chrome is either horrible (like on the PC version) or non-existent (like on the Mac version). One of the things I hate the most about Safari has carried over to Chrome. The bookmark manager doesn’t allow me to manage my bookmarks in a very quick and orderly fashion, like I’m use to doing in FireFox. Plus, how can the Mac version not have a bookmark manager at all? I simply can’t believe they left that out, and I can’t understand why that wouldn’t have been such a trivial thing to add.

Ending the Affair, but Seeking Counseling

While I did have a very fun time with Google Chrome, FireFox just does stuff for me that Google Chrome can’t yet do. However, I think FireFox and I must seek some counseling very quickly, because at the rate Chrome is improving, I think I may stray again in the future.

I don’t want to leave FireFox, I love FireFox. I love what the entire Mozilla foundation has done to support alternative browsers and to help move web standards forward. This post confession wasn’t about how great Google Chrome is becoming, it was about how I would like FireFox to become.

Tags: Browsers, Chrome, Extensions, FireFox, Google, Web Development
Posted in Software | No Comments »

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