Hi! I’m on a combined ‘finally-getting-around-to-blogging’ and ‘get-to-know-the-internet a bit better’ quest. Very happy I found this place. I established my blog #yay an researched a little on custom domain and hosting. Wikihow seemed to offer the most sound advice, but it’s still a bit technical and there’s a jungle of possibilities.
Any tips on how to proceed? Both places to brush up my knowledge and what actually works for you would be interesting. I’m aware I probably don’t need it as I don’t aim to make money blogging and could make up to 3 blogs here (probably?). But I’m really curious how it works.
Hi Anne! A good place to start is Hover. What’s great about Hover is their Connect feature. Once you buy your domain through them, you can go through their list of the featured services the Connect feature works with.
Once you find a service it is simply a matter of following their easy steps and boom - they set up the DNS record for you. No confusion at all. And Write.as is a featured service you can connect to. So if you want to avoid all of the DNS record nonsense, give Hover a try.
Thanks, CJ! I’ll have a look! And I’m going to find out what what DNS record nonsense is 
Hello, I’m trying to find a good hosting site to transfer my domain to. If anyone has suggestions I’d appreciate it.
Hi @GinaAnn! I’d personally recommend using Hover for the reasons above:
Write.as is one of those featured services so hooking up your custom domain to your blog should be an easy process.
Hi cjeller1592. Thanks, but what about the bad reviews I see online for Hover? It doesn’t inspire confidence. Also, one of my domains connected currently to Write.as is registered through Iwantmyname, per recommendation a few years ago from Matt. But I’m seeing bad reviews for them, as well, which is why I was looking for some alternative.
So should I just ignore the bad reviews? You guys know a lot more from experience than I do.
Thanks for your help.
Also, sorry for a lazy question that doesn’t fit this thread, but don’t you have an app that allows to work in Write.as offline? Or something like that? I thought you had something like that, but now I’m not finding it. If you could direct me to any thread talking about that, I’d appreciate it. I’m not the most technical person, so thanks.
What does the bad reviews say? Personally, I have all my international domains registered at iwantmyname and I haven’t had any issues. I connect my domain to Write.as through Iwantmyname, no worries.
oddbobb, thanks for your feedback. At the bottom of this link, lots of really bad reviews. Complaints on administration, money, problems with canceling, etc. https://bestcompany.com/domain-registrars/company/iwantmyname
I would advice to have domain registered in different provider (always choose ICANN accredited one) from your hosting. Some providers pack their offerings so that when you leave their hosting, domain might be complicated to transfer away.
gytisrepecka, do you recommend any particular registrars? Thank you.
GoDaddy is probably the biggest one - I’ve been using their services more than 15 years now. Although they dropped e-mail support and now provide help via phone only.
Moniker is my preference for quite some time - has very convenient control panel.
Name (affiliate link) is also nice - very straightforward and quickly solving problems if any come up.
If you are very privacy aware, there is very nice hosting and domain registration service FlokiNET (affiliate link).
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gytisrepecka, thanks. Here is one I found with high reviews, thought I’d share: https://chemicloud.com.
When it comes to domains, I would advice ICANN accredited registrar. In this case chemicloud uses Public Domain Registry:
Domain Name: CHEMICLOUD.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2049600230_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.publicdomainregistry.com
Registrar URL: www.publicdomainregistry.com
Updated Date: 2019-12-23T19:14:00Z
Creation Date: 2016-08-05T17:15:22Z
In every comain WHOIS you can find who is their ICANN accredited registrar - for COM and NET look into Registrar URL field.
Thanks for that. I looked up reviews on FlokiNET, since I do care about privacy. But saw bad reviews. It seems like there is always a tradeoff of some kind.
I looked up reviews on FlokiNET, since I do care about privacy. But saw bad reviews.
Hi!
I am on FlokiNET and I am doing fine with them.
What were the bad reviews about?
Sometimes users leave bad reviews because of specific issues they encounter with something that doesn’t apply with the majority of other users.
Not that I am pushing for Flokinet specifically, but since I am in there maybe I can help?
My experience of it is that it’s fairly pricey, but the customer support via tickets is actually quite good.
If you are still stuck you could approach this problem a different way and go for an “ethical” choice.
For example, this article suggests several “green” hosting services:
Melyanna, thanks. I’ve seen enough negative reviews to not be inclined to sign up - mostly regarding service and downtime. Since “green” companies tend to use the same ambiguous language of Big Tech, I’m not inclined toward them either. But, thanks. for your thoughts.
My own experience with FlokiNET is very good - no substantial downtime. When it comes to speed, there is quite some latencly from my servers in Lithuania to Iceland, though not bigger than to US, so overall I’m satisfied.
From technical side I like very much that FlokiNET uses QEMU for virtual servers and have full disk encryption 
gytisrepecka, I think I confused this whole thread. Doesn’t write.as host domains? Right now I have two domains registered, one with google and the other with iwantmyname. They are pointed at write.as. Doesn’t that make write.as the host? I just want a good registrar. I really am not good at this stuff. I appreciate any clarification.