I've registered this domain, huuphong(.com).

I've been tracking it for at least 8 years, since 2016.

Those were the early years when I started to understand how the Internet really works. I was very eager to have a website of my own. I didn't know what I would post or what I would do with it if I had a website. It was like a sacred item on my bucket list back then.

I just wanted it, and I wanted to buy a domain name.

I searched for my name starting with the shortest words.

But I still preferred my middle name and surname: Hữu Phong

A name that my mother told me my father had chosen. And the person registering the birth certificate said, "This boy's life will surely have many ups and downs.”, just like the meaning of my name “Has Winds”. Although my mother was quite annoyed by that, I laughed when I heard it.

But someone had registered it back in 2004, when I didn't even know what the Internet was. And it has been maintained up until 2024.

I've learned that nearly all the most common Vietnamese names from one to two words were registered between 2000 and 2006 and have been maintained to nowaday.

And my name was among them.

Afterward, I had to register a domain with my name but it was quite long including full name, and I used it for about 4 years with a small blog I wrote. I didn't expect anyone to know about it; I just used it to learn SEO, learn how to use some services like Wordpress, AWS, VPS, etc,… and document the process. Suprisely, it had a decent number of views, but then I shut it down. I lost interest, and my initial goal had been achieved.

In 2020, I registered a different name. A shorter domain, but using the .vn of my country, a country-code-level domain. I've built hundreds of different website concepts with this domain, from everything I could imagine and that interested me. Every few months, even weeks, I would tear everything down and build a different version. I also learned JavaScript^[1] and React^[2] during this period, which allowed me to do many things I wanted for my work. I'm always grateful for having committed so much. This was also the time when I realized I still love coding line by line by myself, just like when I was in high school. It never changed, I just forgot it.

By February 2024, I realized the domain huuphong(.com) was pending to return available for register. I didn't know why this was happening since it had been renewed for nearly 20 years. Had its owner lost interest? Or did it belong to a failed project? Or had the company using it gone bankrupt? Or simply, did the owner at that time forget to renew it? I was surprised by this.

Then, on February 6th, I was able to register it for just $9.

But I hesitated. I didn't know why I was hesitating like that? I had waited for 8 years, which is an unimaginable amount of time. It was a desire when I was just a teenage boy. Back then, I didn't even have enough money to buy what I wanted; I could only watch it and wait. And now when it happened, when I could register it, I felt hesitant, why was that? It’s weird.

But whatever, I registered it anyway.

HuuPhong, my name.

.com, the root of the Internet, almost every big brand and anyone would want to use .com.

Perfect!

Done. I moved everything over to this domain, from my email to the subdomains of my private sites.

And my main website - which I've always considered a sacred place of my own on the Internet, a small corner of mine on the Internet. I don't want too many people to know about it, just those who really care, those who accidentally find it through any search engine, that's enough. In the end, I'm building it for myself.

Therefore, I'll probably use this huuphong(.com) site to blog, keep a diary, write down my thoughts. I'll write it with inspiration, unedited, like I'm thinking out loud, somewhat sloppy and hard to understand, like when I was 20-22 years old.

I also want to use English, my not-yet-perfect written English. Haha.

Let’s do it.