A couple years ago when I started blogging, KylesCove.com was a domain I settled for because the domains I wanted were all taken. At the time, I didn’t really understand the significance of a domain and the branding side of blogging. For the most part, every day since then, my domain name has really bugged me a great deal. This domain was not purchased with the intention of growing into a large blog and making money online, but instead it was purchased with the idea of having my own personal corner of the blogosphere.

It has now been well over a year now since the purchase of that domain and I’m very happy with this blogs growth, but I still have had an inner distaste for the domain name I was using. Almost as if it is hard to take someone seriously with that domain.

Anyway, last week I was able to acquire a domain that I REALLY liked. It is a domain that has everything I was looking for, including a personal reference to my last name, is short and very memorable, easy to spell, and is much much much more brandable. The new domain name is Slick Affiliate, and I feel it has everything I am looking for in a domain name. I also own all variations of it (or at least the ones that matter). Therefore, I decided that there probably wasn’t a better time to make the domain switch.

Why change now?

This is something that I’ve been planning to do eventually and after a lot of careful thought, I decided that it was finally time to make the move before I get any more invested in the old domain name. I also felt that the old domain had kind of plateaued and a change was needed to take that next step in this blog’s personal growth. I’ve got a lot of great posts scheduled to appear over the coming weeks that I really like and I’d like to use them to kick off this new domain name.

How will this affect this site?

That is something I tried to figure out before making the change. I checked out ahead of time what was involved in 301 redirects, database moves, how to change the Feedburner feed, etc. I talked with my web hosting company to see if they offered assistance in moves and such. I then gathered the information, weighed my options, and decided it was worth making the change…..in the long run. For the few months, things may take a little bit to work themselves out, but six months from now it will be well worth the change.

What can I do to help?

Although I could have used my old Feedburner feed, I decided that it was better to be consistent with the change, so all I ask is that you update your feed for this site. Here is the Slick Affiliate feed. For the next 15 days the old feed will still get posts from the new website. After that, the old feed will prompt you to subscribe to my new feed.

Everything else should be the exact same for you, the reader. The only other thing you could do to help is update your blogroll or any permanent link that was pointing towards Kyle’s Cove to the new URL. Don’t worry about post-level links, as those should redirect to the appropriate post on the new URL.

The logo and favicon are just temporary until I get my permanent logo and favicon created. Everything else should be good to go!

Any other questions or thoughts on the change and the new domain name? Think I need a straight jacket? Let me know in the comments below! Also let me know if you run across anything that needs updated/fixed.