Owning My Little Plot of the Internet

The Subdomain Era

For over a year, my personal site quietly lived at astro-dollop.vercel.app.

If you’re wondering where “AstroDollop” came from, there is no deeper lore behind it. When I first started building this site with Astro.js, I wanted a unique handle, GitHub suggested a random word combination, and I rolled with it. It worked, it was functional, and Vercel made hosting effortless.

But let’s be honest: having a .vercel.app subdomain never quite sat right with me. Domains are cheap, hosting was already sorted (Vercel, just with my own nameservers and DNS pointed at it), and the only real blocker was me actually committing to buying one.

The 2 AM Reddit Rabbit Hole

Being my first time buying a domain, I didn’t want to mess it up or get trapped in some shady renewal price hike.

So naturally, my “in-depth research” consisted of doomscrolling Reddit comparison threads between 1 and 2 AM. I went through countless debates about GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Cloudflare. But one name kept popping up over and over again with almost cult-like praise: Porkbun.

Porkbun registrar cartoon pig mascot illustration

The mascot that sealed the deal.

A domain registrar named Porkbun with a cartoon pig mascot? I was intrigued.

After digging into pricing, transparent renewals, and free WHOIS privacy, it came down to Cloudflare vs. Porkbun. Porkbun’s mascot sealed the deal for me. I put my trust in the pig, please don’t let me down 😭.

The Handle Identity Crisis

Next came picking the actual domain name.

I originally thought about going with astrodollop.com. But then I looked at all my other internet handles:

  • GitHub: debanath
  • Socials / Emails: debanath or deba26

(Quick story on the “26”: when I got my first smartphone as a kid and signed up for Google, it suggested “26” at the end of my name, and I just never let it go).

I didn’t want numbers in my domain though. So I typed in debanath on a whim. Available. Checked .com. Also available.

I snatched debanath.com immediately before second thoughts could creep in.

Setting It Up & Digital Real Estate

Pointing Porkbun’s DNS and nameservers over to Vercel took less than five minutes. Having done client freelance work, setting up records wasn’t new to me, but doing it for my own name felt surprisingly different.

It sounds simple, but watching debanath.com resolve for the first time gave me that weirdly satisfying feeling of: “Woah, this is actually mine.” It feels like buying a tiny plot of land on this massive, chaotic internet.

Trusting the Random Impulses

Looking back, almost every milestone for this site was driven by random impulse:

  • Picking AstroDollop from a generator
  • Sticking with deba26 because Google said so
  • Buying debanath.com at 2 AM on August 30th

If I had overthought it, I probably would have convinced myself that the free Vercel subdomain was “good enough.” But sometimes, you just have to trust the impulse and go with the flow.

Welcome to my new home: debanath.com, come say hi 👋

- Deba