So domain registration is just part of life. It’s right up there with death and taxes, well that may be a little exaggerated for standard folk but let’s face it, your domain is an identity. I’m asberry.org the same way I’m Aron Asberry. I have to get my license renewed every so often and it’s the same way with the domains.

In the dark ages companies like GoDaddy preyed upon both novice and experts alike. $2.99 domain registrations opened the door for up-sales and charges up the wazoo. Then Google brought it’s ‘do no evil’ to domain registration with simple yearly pricing, the centralized, intuitive dashboard, and auto privacy as well as included SSH and all was good.

That is until it wasn’t, large companies like Google can’t not be evil forever, just not in their nature. So they sold off the domain registrar bushiness with 10 million domains to Squarespace and clouds began to form and it got dark. SqSp will honor the $12 for a year so the first renewal is at the old price, but then what? I don’t trust SqSp any further than I can throw them.

A ray of hope showed up on my Facebook feel when WordPress.com says they’ll transfer and renew for a year at no charge if you sign up with them. Well why not, I already have an account with WordPress.com and they hook you up with a free year, why not?

So I transferred 7 domains leaving my .us domain behind because it’s not supported. The process was fairly simple and I’m still checking out the DNS and validating that everything is working but so far so good. Not super happy about the interface, not nearly as clean as Google but it does what you need to. There seem to be a lot more add ons like email address and such but nothing too annoying. So far I’m happy but domain registration isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon and we’ll find out if WordPress is in it for the long run. Here’s hoping!!!