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After many years and experiments, another conclusion I'd like to share:
- Make sure you "own" (well, technically: rent) at least one domain name with a recognisable but not "funny" name (my main domain is wildeboer.net)
- Only "buy" one of .com, .net, .org, .eu (when you live there) or your countries top level domain (TLD). Ignore all the fancy hype TLDs.
Your domain can become your digital identity authority that YOU control. This will become more important mid-to longterm, IMHO. 1/5
As soon as you have "your" domain, you can do a lot of things that help you keep control of your digital identity. For example, use it to redirect e-mails via yournickname@yourdomain to services like proton or gmail. You can now switch email providers in case it's needed as YOU control the domain. 2/5
You can also use subdomains for other services. I use https://social.wildeboer.net for this Mastodon instance, hosted by https://masto.host. I use https://share.wildeboer.net for #Nextcloud backed storage hosted by Hetzner to share pictures, files etc. I use https://jan.wildeboer.net for my blog running on my own little VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosted by netcup. "Owning" a domain name gives me more control. 3/5
Yes, it comes with a bit of a learning curve. How to "buy" a domain and at which provider? How to configure DNS (Domain Name System [1]) with the correct CNAME entries etc. This looks complicated and dangerous. But once you've understood the basics, you will feel empowered and more in control of your digital identity. Totally worth it, IMHO! It's a skill that should be taught to everyone, IMHO :) 4/5
So how do we get more people to "own" domains and use them? I guess a lot of people have a lot of very different ideas. My initial idea is simple. Let's have regular DNS meetups, in person, where we simply meet at a nice place, help you to book a domain, configure it correctly etc. But I am sure others have even better ideas. Let's discuss. 5/5
@jwildeboer A non-profit that manages this for people might help. You may even be able to set it up as a registrar so it doesn't need to integrate with third parties. It would need to provide a mechanism for buying domains and a (community contributed) way of generating DNS records for specific things so you could say 'I use service X, set up DNS records for it thanks' and a legal structure so that the domains that it registered were fully owned by the individuals who registered them and would be returned to them in the event the non-profit went out of business.
