So I got hold of a domain that shows my exact full name. I thought it would be useful for showing up as “professional” when working in IT and sending resumes.
I got some mail forwarded using the domain registrar. I also made a small static website, which only has hello world for now but soon will get the contents filled up.
But then… what? I suppose I can host anything I want, but then there’s the whole “real name - gotta look professional” aspect that makes me weary of hosting a Lemmy instance, for example, when the domain without my name attached wouldn’t.
I suppose having personal domains were cool in the 90s where people were barely learning about “the internets”. Not so anymore?
Is there a usefulness in having a domain name with your real name attached on this age?
If you do any sort of programming, this would be a good place to showcase screen shots of some things you have built (maybe with redacted company names/identifiers).
Use a second domain for your less professional stuff?
It is a bit of gimic though, and I suspect rather than coming across as professional on your resume, it will probably be more of a “huh, cool” kinda thing?
I have issues where companies won’t let me register because ‘you can’t have your last name as the @lastname’. They don’t trust it or whatever…I dunno
They have no issues trying to mail me their spam fliers but won’t let me use it to communicate with them. Kinda fucky…but yes it is more of a that’s cool moment.
Lol, I often get a lot of confirmations on if my email address is right whenever I am in contact with any customer service… I use a catch-all on lastname[dot]com.
“Is your email really ‘nameofservice@lastname•com’?”
Glad to see I’m not the only one doing this. It definitely leads to a lot of small talk about my email domain, but I’ve never run into a situation yet where I couldn’t sign up for something. My personal favorite is when reluctantly providing an email for something I don’t care about I can spout out something like “blockthishottrash@mydomain.tld”. That’s lead to some fun reactions.
I’ve run into services that won’t let you use the name of their service in your email. They assume it’s is their email because they don’t look for .*@servicename\.com$ they look for .*servicename.*.
I use a “real name” domain. My last name ends in the letters “in”, so I bought a .in domain, such that the domain name is my last name with a dot in it.
Can’t honestly recommend that approach. It’s a cute gimmick, but when non-technical people ask for your email address and it doesn’t end in a TLD they recognize, their heads explode. I usually give out my gmail address.
There are multiple of us! I did the exact same thing, except for using my own name. Mine ends in .re of Réunion. I think it’s fun so I’m keeping it.
For sharing it offline I have a big text widget on my phone. They usually get it if they can read it, but not if I spell it out.
I did first@last.me and can confirm, it confuses people all too often.
I have first@last.email, and my community rec organization couldn’t even accept it because their system had a hard coded lost of TLDs it would recognize for email addresses.
I got firstlast.info (it used to be cheap)
It’s good for email and personal sites (those aren’t dead, but they’re more popular for people that either write a lot or are self-employed). I’d only use a personal domain for self hosted apps if the users are just you and your family.
For something like hosting Lemmy, with users you don’t know, I wouldn’t use the same domain as where you host your other personal stuff, even if it’s not your name.
I bought a fun domain in '98, used it for email only. Next to that I bought a domain with just my surname. I have several sites in that domain, for my personal stuff, one for the pets, our wedding,… It’s a lot more flexible then using the complete name. (But you have to be lucky enough to catch it)
Next to these 2 I have 2 others in my countries tld for messing about with. Those are a lot cheaper and my company has 3 more domains. The total set costs me €90 a year.
