Hi friends,

Because we’ve been talking about personal websites around here for a little while now, Chris decided to gather his thoughts about them for 99U. 

One of the things he gets into is the importance of owning your own domain. When you own your domain, you can build your site on your own terms. It sounds simple enough, but choosing a domain name is hard. It’s a pretty permanent decision about something you probably care a lot about. Choosing a domain registrar isn’t easy either. While your registrar choice isn’t permanent, the wrong one can make changing a headache.

So, for a little help with your domain name, here’s a handy guide to naming things. These exercises for writing an “about me” blurb are also relevant and may be helpful. Chris shares more ideas on naming in the 99U post. And he’s also gathered some domain registrar recommendations on his own blog.

If you’re already publishing on third-party platforms, Jeremy Keith has some excellent ideas for making the most of those tools while maintaining control of your content on your own site in this talk.

As always, when you’re ready to share your own personal site, please reply to a newsletter or tweet us a link so we can share it with other readers.

P.S. We’re hiring a frontend developer. If you or someone you know may be interested in helping us build a better web, learn more about the role. Likewise, if you or someone you know needs help with web design, strategy, or development, consider hiring us. 

On technology, design, and business

• Erin Kissane’s entire book, The Elements of Content Strategy, is available for free (definitely worth buying a copy if you can though)
• This is a friendly little introduction to web development for complete beginners
• And this is a pretty comprehensive post about form design

On anything and everything else 

• More than 40 years of interviews with Terry Gross from Fresh Air are now online
• You can download high-res files of some very nice 3D maps of National Parks for free (backstory here)
• From starting a podcast to making a zine, here’s an artist’s guide to creating your own opportunities

A nice personal website *

Please visit the elegant and instructive website of Sanette Sloan, a designer (and dear friend of Roost) who loves stories.

* Personal websites help keep the web free, open, and creative. And, unlike other places on the internet, they tend to be just plain pleasant places to learn about people’s work, ideas, and lives. So, we’re regularly sharing personal websites of newsletter readers and friends here. Please reply to this email or say hi on Twitter with a link to your personal website.