I’ve decided to actually get around to creating a portfolio site. Bought the domain, but have done… nothing.
Oops.
First off, email and DNS takes time to propagate, so I decided to get Google Apps set up with that domain to be able to send & receive email from that domain. But I had decisions to make, which is the topic of this post.I started using Google Apps for my kyl191.net email since… Google Apps for Domains was released, I think. Looking at the all mail page, the earliest mail is 6/7/07. So almost exactly 5 years.
Now, because of the vagaries of GMail and Google Accounts, I’ve ended up with a lot of accounts:
- I started off with a @gmail.com account, then
- Moved personal stuff over to @kyl191.net
- Had Google Analytics and the like split off from my @kyl191.net account when Google Apps split into business and personal aspects – which, come to think of it, I have no clue what account this stuff is now under
- Then I had to split off my Google+ account from my @kyl191.net account when Google said domain accounts can’t have Google+ profiles associated, into another @gmail account
- On top of the @home.domain accounts that I’m keeping for my servers to use, because I don’t trust my ISP’s web filtering that may block SMTP.
So another Google Account would be nothing – but it’d add to the messiness, and I don’t want that.
My original plan was to have my new old domain lightweaver.ca have its own Google Apps account, but I discovered it’s not really necessary. In theory, I can add a domain alias to kyl191.net, which will get around the whole ‘new Google Account’ thing – and allow me to receive email to that address, and then use Gmail’s ‘send as xyz’ functionality to be able to send email.
Now, there’s talk about messages sent that way showing up in Outlook as “sent by xyz on behalf of abc”. Which is annoying, but then I realised that I don’t know of anyone using Outlook outside of teachers at my old school, and my dad’s office (because they use BES, which hooks into Exchange). And the effect of “Sent on behalf” should be minimal in any case.
I know there’s ways around it – one thing I was considering was creating the domain, then using Gmail’s ‘fetch from other accounts’ and ‘send though other mail server’ functionality to get around it. But that doesn’t prevent the proliferation of Google Accounts, which I want to avoid.
There’s also paying for Google Apps for Business, and using the send from domain alias functionality, but I’m giving that a miss since it costs money. (I’m doing everything on a budget!)
Of course, I’ll have to see what it works out like. I’m hoping it’ll work out. In the meantime though, I’ll be working on finishing the design of my new site, publishing it, futzing around with .htaccess rules because I’ve been using lightweaver.ca as a CNAME for kyl191.net, which obviously won’t work anymore so I’ll need to redirect people (and robots) who may be using those URLs to get to my blog.
Funfunfun.