Fixpoint

This blog, which previously answered at the hostname fixpoint.welshcomputing.com, is moving to the far more concise and completion friendly jfxpt.com.

The Internet Protocol address behind the name is unchanged since its 2019 inception at 198.199.70.97.

Steps already completed are that the new domain is registered in the ICANN system swamp (and quite the pain that turned out to be, yet again), the address record is published on my own djbdns nameserver, and Apache is configured to respond on it.

I'll give it about a week to let people update their hosts files, feed subscriptions and whatnot as desired. Then, the next steps are to change the canonical URLs generated by Wordpress (WP_SITEURL in wp-config.php) and configure Apache to redirect old URLs. So as not to break any links, I intend to maintain the old domain for redirection purposes for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, I'll probably do a bulk update of my internal links.

For the background here: I first set up welshcomputing.com in 2014 as a simple, hand-coded HTML site with contact information and a small gallery of my published code. On deciding (or "being dragged kicking and screaming" as the case may be) to start a proper blog, I figured I already had a fine domain name on which I was committed to paying rent until the end of time, so I'd just give the new PHP application its own subtree at welshcomputing.com/fixpoint/. For techni-political reasons I needed to run it on a new server,⁽ⁱ⁾ so set up the front-end to proxy that URL space to the backend. After various further goose chasings I concluded that MP-WP really didn't like being thus proxied and the costs of forcing it to do things my way were already way out of hand, so I reluctantly gave it its separate subdomain.

It wasn't long before the blog was where all the good stuff was at, making it look rather awkward to be relegated to such an unwieldy name, and doubly so with the introduction of our IRC channel log view and referencing system. Still, I don't believe anyone complained about it specifically, and although it provoked a search for other approaches altogether, it had to wait its turn in the long line of problems.

At one point I looked around for domains more directly derived from "Fixpoint", finding them mostly taken and for no good use. One "owner" I contacted was quite happy to keep paying the carrying costs so as to maintain his dream that someone like me would come along and reward him handsomely for all those years of hard squatting work. Thus I am delighted to inform him that despite his best efforts, there are still plenty of good dot-com names in the sea, even if the same can't be said for fish or for people.

1. So as to run it under the better supported Apache on CentOS, rather than nginx which I was using on the server with an early Gales Linux. [^]