How I Set Up a Custom Domain for My Blog

(Image by author)

I’m building my own blog with Astro, hosted as static pages on GitHub Pages. At some point “filip-melka.github.io/blog” stops feeling like a real address, so I went and got my own domain. Here’s the whole process, start to finish.

How Does A Domain Work?

Before buying anything, it’s worth knowing what you’re actually buying. Let’s take a domain apart:

https://www.example.com

• https: protocol
• www: subdomain
• example.com: domain name, made up of example (the name) and com (the Top-Level Domain)

TLD (Top-Level Domain)

The TLD is the suffix at the end of a domain name — .com, .org, .net, .io, .de etc. TLDs sit at the top of the domain naming hierarchy and fall into a few buckets:

• gTLDs (generic): .com, .org, .net, .app, .dev
• ccTLDs (country code): .uk, .de, .jp
• sTLDs (sponsored, restricted to specific communities): .gov, .edu, .mil

Fun fact: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) reserves every two-letter TLD exclusively for country codes, which is why gTLDs are always three or more characters. The twist is that some countries have leased out their…