Over the years I’ve spent wandering around the internet, I’ve bought five international domain names. All but one were .com, and every single one was properly registered through the required filing process.
Whether it was the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology filing or the public security filing, I never really had any resistance to those rules. I don’t care much about the so-called privacy concerns, I don’t mind waiting, and I’m not especially bothered by the idea of regulation being able to step in at any time. For someone who just wants to build a site and write a blog, it’s simply another set of steps to complete.
If not for the trouble caused by one particular domain years ago, this independent blog would probably have followed the same old route: file the domain, use mainland hosting, and be done with it. I’m a little obsessive about page speed, after all. But this time it isn’t that I don’t want to go that route — I genuinely can’t.
After more than half a year of living with an unfied domain, I’ve felt the inconvenience very clearly.
Hosting options are basically limited to Hong Kong or the United States. The providers that look affordable on paper often fall short where it matters most: speed and stability. The better-regarded ones are expensive enough to make you hesitate. Even the free image hosting options I considered usually require a filed domain name. Static hosting also ends up relying on overseas nodes.
Right now I’m using hugo+cloudfare, basically leaning on the full bundle from the benevolent giant. Performance from where I am is still pretty decent, but I’ve heard that in some regions and under some carriers the experience is terrible. I even asked AI about a fundamental fix, and the answer was unsurprising: complete the filing and move to domestic hosting.
That leaves me stuck on a question I still haven’t settled. At a time when personal blogs are becoming more and more niche, do I keep going with a static blog, or do I find some roundabout way to get filed and return to mainland hosting?
When I have nothing better to do, I use Xiaopi Panel locally to tinker with typecho. I’ve been modifying themes and importing articles from Hugo. I don’t know whether I’ll actually switch in the future, but there’s no harm in getting things ready first.