Put the writing on your own domain
A custom domain is the one part of a blog that is genuinely yours. Here is the order that gets you onto it without a gap in service or a run of broken links.
The address matters more than the platform
A domain is the only piece of this you can take anywhere. Platforms change, themes change, and you will probably rewrite the site at least once. If the posts have always lived at yourname.com, none of that ever reaches your readers: the links people saved still work, the search results still point somewhere real, and moving hosts is a DNS change instead of an announcement.
Do it early
The cost of moving grows with every link anyone else has made to you. Two posts in, nobody notices. Two hundred posts and a few years of inbound links in, you are writing redirects and losing some of them anyway. If you are going to own the address, own it before the archive is worth something.
Choose your username
This will be the address for your site.
yourname.floggy.xyz
Letters, numbers, and hyphens only
Write and check the posts here first. The domain is the last thing you change.
Moving over, in order
Register the domain, or dig out the one you own
Buy it from any registrar you like. Floggy does not sell domains and does not need to be the registrar, so an address you bought years ago and forgot about works exactly the same as one you buy this afternoon.
Publish the content first
Get the posts into Floggy and read them on your floggy.xyz address while nothing points at it yet. Fixing a broken image here costs nothing. Fixing it after the domain is live costs it in front of whoever showed up.
Add the domain in settings
Enter the domain in your blog settings. Floggy hands you the DNS records to create and then waits for them, so you can set this up before you change anything at the registrar.
Point DNS at Floggy
Create the records at your registrar exactly as shown. Propagation is usually minutes and occasionally hours, and until it finishes some readers reach the old destination and some reach the new one. That is normal, not a fault.
Redirect the old address
If the blog lived somewhere else, leave that site up and redirect each post to its new URL rather than deleting it. Search engines follow a permanent redirect and hand the history over. A 404 throws that history away.
Check the quiet things
Walk the parts that break without telling you: the RSS feed, the sitemap, the newsletter footer, the link in your bio and anything pinned on a social profile. These are the ones nobody notices for a month.
A platform is a choice you can remake at any time. The address is the one your readers memorised, so it is the one worth deciding carefully and then never touching again.
What to have in place before you switch DNS
- Every post you care about is published and reads correctly on the floggy.xyz address.
- Images and embeds load, including the ones in your oldest posts.
- The domain is registered to you, not to an agency or a former colleague.
- You can log in to the registrar and edit DNS records today, not next week.
- The old site can stay online long enough to serve redirects for a while.
- You have a list of your most-linked URLs to spot check once the move lands.
Domain questions
Do I have to buy the domain through Floggy?
No, and you cannot. Floggy is not a registrar. You buy the domain wherever you like and point it here, which also means the account controlling your address is yours and stays yours if you ever decide to leave.
Will I lose my search rankings?
Not if you redirect. A permanent redirect from each old URL to its new one passes the history along, and search engines usually settle within a few weeks. What does lose rankings is deleting the old site outright, or moving with no redirects and hoping the new pages get found on their own.
How long does the DNS change take?
Usually minutes, sometimes hours, and the outer edge is about a day if the old records carried a long TTL. Lowering the TTL a day before you switch shortens that window. Nothing is down while it happens; some readers simply reach the old destination a little longer.
What happens to links people already saved?
They keep working as long as the old address redirects, which is the whole reason that step is on the list. Anything you cannot redirect, an old newsletter footer or a card you had printed, is worth fixing where you can and living with where you cannot.
Claim your address
Start on a floggy.xyz subdomain today and attach the domain whenever you are ready. The writing does not have to wait for the DNS.