Readers of this blog might have noticed that Reappropriate has a rather unusual URL. Specifically, my domain is Reappropriate.co, which uses the relatively obscure .co top-level domain compared to the much more prevalent .com domains.
Long-time readers of Reappropriate — and by that I mean folks who have been reading this blog prior to 2012 — might remember that Reappropriate used to be found at Reappropriate.com.
I had researched the domain extensively — checking to see if it overlapped with any other domain names or existing brands — and I had even agonized over whether I wanted a .com or a .org URL. When I finally made my decision, I registered Reappropriate.com in the early-2000’s. I transferred the blog from its blogspot hosting, and I ended up maintaining this blog for nearly a decade at Reappropriate.com.
But then, grad school happened. Or specifically, my dissertation defense happened.
Around the time when I was scrambling to complete and defend my doctoral dissertation thesis (and get the corresponding papers ready for publication), I accidentally let my registration of Reappropriate.com lapse. It was a combination of oversight and, well, grad school poverty. I also have to admit: there had been a part of me that wasn’t sure at the time that I had the energy or interest to maintain the blog — or, if I was ready to close the blogging and Asian American activism chapter of my life for good. And so, I hadn’t noticed that my domain registration had expired.
It took a couple of months (and a successful dissertation defense) for me to decide that I still wanted to work on Reappropriate. By the time I caught the error (and had the funds necessary to renew my domain registration), it was too late. Someone had swooped in and taken my Reappropriate.com domain.
I was devastated. I felt like a piece of my personal history had been lost. After spending a little more time to assess my options, I registered Reappropriate.co — the closest domain I could find to Reappropriate.com — and set out to do the work of shifting this blog’s “branding” over to that new identity and home.
Five years later, Reappropriate has thrived at Reappropriate.co. But, I’ve always mourned the loss of my .com URL. Furthermore, the transition was imperfect: people still look for me at Reappropriate.com and emails to me still routinely get sent by accident to a Reappropriate.com email address. (Nonetheless, I had gotten lucky: some time in the last few years, the new owner of Reappropriate.com realized that the most lucrative thing to do with that domain was to set up a manual forward to Reappropriate.co along with a few webads to generate some income. Readers who accidentally typed in Reappropraite.com could still find this blog, even if they were forced to load some extra web ads along the way. It could have been much worse.)
Over the last few years, I brainstormed ways to get Reappropriate.com back; but I never really thought I would have any real options. In August, I launched a Patreon, which allows supporters to commit funds to help grow and support Reappropriate. A few weeks later, by happenstance, I discovered that the new owner of Reappropriate.com was willing to sell it.
Using some of the money that has already been raised in the last couple of months through Patreon (as well as a sizable chunk of my own funds) I was able to make a bid to buy back Reappropriate.com. And, I’m delighted to announce that as of today, Reappropriate.com is back in my possession.
Readers who accidentally type in Reappropriate.com will now safely be forwarded to Reappropriate.co (without loading any extra web ads or malware). Anyone who tries to contact me by email at [email protected] will have those emails forwarded to the proper email address at [email protected], too.
Maybe I’ll be the only one in the world who really cares about this; but, I confess to care. Something about getting my original domain name back makes Reappropriate feel more established and stable; maybe even a little bit more legitimate and whole.
So, I just want to thank every reader — as well as every Patreon supporter — for helping to make this happen. Here’s to many more years of Reappropriate writing — at either .co or .com!
