Does owning your own domain = owning your content? I am not so sure.

@frankm No, but it's an important step.

@donblanco My point I think is that it is not enough. One needs to have direct access to their content, either on their own server or on their own computer. What I write on a Wordpress blog is on their server and can go away with any hardware failure even if I own the domain name that resolves to it.

Owning the domain name provides the appearance of your own content, but isn't true ownership, but which I am equating access if the server hosting it were to disappear.

@frankm What about owning your domain and downloading your content periodically? (Speaking for the technically non-savy who isn't up for self hosting)

@frankm No, owning your own domain = owning your own identity. But if the content is with a provider you trust with an option to export, then I think that is considered owning your content. Technically my content sites on GitHub and my DreamHost server, but I trust that I can access my content if I want to move it.

@frankm It lets you own the links. So if you move your content elsewhere, you don’t break the web. That’s the most important sense of ownership conferred by domains, I think.

@ablaze Exactly right and that's also how Manton explained it to me when I was trying to decide whether to get my own domain name. Once I understood, I got one, several actually, and I'm glad I did.

@ablaze Of course, you’re only renting the links too. You can’t actually buy a domain name outright. @ron

@jeremycherfas @ron That's a stupendously good point

@jeremycherfas Yes, and we'll ALL be dead one day. And then others will live in my beloved home, which I do own now. Our giant one hundred foot tall tree will likely provide shade for our successors in the home. Memento mori.

@Ron Whoa. This discussion got dark. =)

@jeremycherfas That is a really good point, and why you better not let your domain names lapse! It's not like getting your electricity cut if you don't pay the bill. It's not like you pay the bill to restore service. You will probably never get the domain back, at least not at a reasonable rate.

@frankm as a guy that ran a web server from his home for almost 15 years, it’s comforting but also a lot of work to maintain. not to mention the potential for downtime, data loss and other issues.

@EddieHinkle I don't disagree, but I think it a good idea to download a backup to a computer that you have direct control over.

@frankm self-host, regular backups.

@kimonostereo I've been there too, I am not so much advocating running your own server, but I think you want copies of your content on a computer you control in case your provider crashes goes out of business etc.. And the trick is getting that content in a format you can use.

@manton has set up micro.blog with the ability to push a copy of my content here to a github repo, which I can then clone down to a PC and maintain, which provides me with several degrees of backup. AND, since that is all jekyll, my content is all in text files that I can pretty much use anywhere.

@EddieHinkle Agree, and my point. Its the combination of being the master of your domain AND having access to your content in a usable form.

@Ron Need an estate plan for domain names and web sites. Our friend Dave has been advocating this concept for some time. The best I have is document what domains I own and the services I pay for, and if someone keeps paying the bills, they could run after I am gone.

@ft It's not the most user friednly feature, but you can mirror your micro.blog content (less @-replies) on GitHub: help.micro.blog/2016/mirr...

@frankm Yes, I need to prepare one of those! Of course this is also one of the reasons Dave has been fighting the good fight with Google over HTTP, as most of his sites were built with HTTP and still have HTTP. In my own writing, I have sometimes pointed to some of those sites to make key points and I was very glad I could do that.

@stevepbrady Sorry, but memento mori need not be dark at all, it just recognizes the truth. I've found my Buddhist friends to be especially capable in this area. They encourage us to be fully conscious in every moment possible.

@ft There is also an export to Wordpress option in Posts that provide a way to download a backup to your PC. The GitHub approach is better because it is a backup. You could also use an IFTTT recipe to archive your content from RSS.

@frankm Yeah, definitely! We agree 🙂 And to clarify, I do periodically download my GitHub repo to my computer so I do have a backup of my content, like you said 👍

@kicks I think the limitations you mention with Webmention on Micro.blog — or having accounts — are temporary. I plan to expand both of those. (As for domain names, I think they are very important. I'd hate to see Neocities change or fail and take your site with it.)

@manton Oh definitely! I apologize if I’m coming across as critical - I’m kind of working in the dark here as to how one should connect with micro.blog from the outside. (How to craft replies, where Webmentions show up.) But this isn’t unusual—every blog has its quirks, its templates and conventions. There are a jillion microformats and there are Salmentions and so on. Anyway, on the contrary, I’ve enjoyed sorting out how to participate here and hope I can perhaps provide some useful stuff to you.