Why I disabled my custom domain for 42 Sidenotes

And how I kept all links to specific page alive as well - not only the "bare" domain

Preparing the launch of Deliberately Difficult & Laughing, I have revisited the question of whether to set up a custom domain for it or not.

Now, having a custom domain for your publication makes absolutely sense. Just ask Jill Hart or read her excellent article that dives deep into the pros and cons:

Custom Domain or No Custom Domain

It convinced me to both have a distinct domain that I personally own (already had it actually) and not enable it via Substack’s custom domain feature.

Because redirecting (or forwarding as it’s also referred to) your domain to your Substack subdomain gets you the best of both worlds.

Sort of…

Redirecting (forwarding) is the Internet’s version of an “I have moved house” message

Yes, it keeps your publication and its promotion independent from the platform you use. Which is a humongous biggie in my world.

Because it means I’m free to move to Beehive, Ghost, Patreon, or whatever rocks your socks off when the fancy takes you (or the economics make sense, or…)

When you switch, you only need to update your “I’ve moved house” message. And it keeps doing that for as long as you keep the redirection.

Both Jill Hart’s article (which was inspired by and points to one by Kristi Keller 🇨🇦 tell you how to redirect (forward) your own domain to your Substack.

My Perspective on Using A Custom Domain On Your Substack

Jill’s is steps are general. Kristi’s are specific to GoDaddy.

Both work.

Except for one, naggingly frustrating detail.

Naively redirecting your domain still kills links

Yes, using the method both Jill Hart and Kristi Keller give you, people clicking on links get redirected to where you point your domain.

But…

And this is a major “but”!

They get sent to the main/home page, not the specific article the clicked the link of.

That’s not why I have my own domain!

It’s not something that Substack causes, by the way.

It’s inherent to how the internet and domain redirection works when you set it up at the DNS (Domain Name Service¹) level.

What domain level (“naive”) redirection does

For example, if I’d only have my 42sidenotes.com domain redirected to Substack (it’s properly and fully redirected by now), clicking the link to a specific article on LinkedIn or even in a Substack Note like

https://42sidenotes.com/p/nina-changed-my-mind

would take you to

https://42sidenotes.substack.com

Not to the article I linked!

Yikes.

That’s not what I want.
That’s not what I want to happen when I share a link to an article on social.
That’s not the experience I want for my readers when they click a link in an email.

It’s exactly what Substack fixes for you through using their custom domain feature. Like it does for Tim Ebl 🇨🇦 ‘s Time to Thrive and did for 42 Sidenotes.

But then you also lose you most of the benefits of having a Substack publication.

(Which I didn’t even know it did until reading Jill Hart’s article. Because Substack didn’t tell me. At least not in any obvious way.)

That’s not nice!

So I hesitated to disable 42 Sidenotes’ custom domain. And wasn’t sure about using redirection for Deliberately Difficult & Laughing.

But you can have your cake and eat it too.

What I want, what I really, really want…

This is where my former life in software and web design/development came in. I know what’s possible. So I don’t lie down and take a solution I find less than useful and user-friendly. And let’s not even talk about shooting-yourself-in-your-marketing-and-promotion of it.

When I share a link to an article “out in the wild” — like on social platforms — I want anyone who clicks it to be taken to that specific article. Regardless of whatever platform I happen to use at any given time.

So, when I share

https://42sidenotes.com/p/nina-changed-my-mind

I want readers to be taken to

https://42sidenotes.substack.com/p/nina-changed-my-mind

at the moment, and to

https://42sidenotes.any_platform].com/nina-changed-my-mind

when I decide to switch platforms.

Let me tell you how to do it. And don’t worry, it involves a little more than setting up a redirect for your domain, but it’s still pretty simple.

How to fix naive redirection without losing the benefits of publishing on a Substack subdomain

And WITHOUT killing all links in the wild in the process.

What you need:

1. A domain name (d’oh)

2. A hosting plan connected to that domain

You need the hosting plan because full redirection of both the domain and all its individual pages requires a single, specific file on your domain.

Most domain name providers also offer hosting and vice versa.

As you only need one file, you can go with the cheapest hosting you can find. Speed and capacity don’t really matter because nothing else will be load from that host.

When you have a hosting plan connected to your domain, this is what you do:

Step 1: Remove any redirection you’ve set up

Any redirection at the domain level will prevent the real solution from working. That’s because it kicks in before the file you’ll create in the next step gets read.

Step 2: Open your hosting’s file manager

At your hosting provider, locate the file manager for your site. Open it.

I use Hostinger (aff)² as my hosting provider at the moment³.

Step 3: Navigate to your site’s home folder on the server

If you were creating a standard bare-bones HTML⁴ site, your site’s pages would live in a specific folder on one of the hosting provider’s servers.

Full redirection of all the pages on your publication, requires a single, specific file. This file needs to be created in the “home” folder of your site.

If you have a hosting plan for multiple sites like I do, the file manager often can take you to the folder in which all your sites live or to a specific site’s folder:

At Hostinger (aff), when I click the “Access files of …” for a site, the file manager opens in another tab and shows me this:

“DO_NOT_UPLOAD_HERE” speaks for itself, I’d say. The folder you want to open is the “public_html” one (most hosting providers use that). If you have a hosting plan for a single site, opening the file manager usually takes you straight there.

Step 4: Create the all important file

With your home folder open (double-clicking it usually does the trick), use the menu item that let’s you create a new file:

That either opens the file content editor directly (in which case you need to name it when saving the contents) or opens a small dialog to name the file first.

Either way, name the new file .htaccess exactly, character for character!
In the image above it’s already showing because I created the file before creating this screenshot. It’s greyed out because it’s a system file: a file that governs the operating of your site.

When you’re in the file content editor enter the following lines:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^42sidenotes.com [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.42sidenotes\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://42sidenotes.substack.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Obviously replacing 42sidenotes.com with yours!

• The first IfModule line checks for the presence of a software module that provides what we need. Most hosting providers provide this by default.

• The second RewriteEngine line switches on the features in that file.

• The third and fourth RewriteCond lines tell it when to apply the fifth RewriteRule line.

What it accomplishes is this: when someone types in (or clicks a link) either to 42sidenotes.com (line 3) or to www.42sidenotes.com (line 4), it rewrites the requested page’s URL (address) to https://42sidenotes.substack.com/$1

This is what takes care of redirecting both the “bare” domain 42sidenotes.com as well as the usual www Internet subdomain: www.42sidenotes.com⁵

The /$1 is where the magic happens for links to individual pages. It ensures that when people enter or click https://42sidenotes.com/p/nina-changed-my-mind, they get send to https://42sidenotes.substack.com/p/nina-changed-my-mind.

Be sure to save the file (click save or done after entering the lines and triple checking them for typos) and you’re all done!

How Substack still kills the advantage of a custom domain unless you pay attention

I like what Jill Hart and Kristi Keller wrote about custom domains vs subdomains.

But there’s one thing I noticed about Substack that neither of them mentions. And it happens with both a Substack subdomain and a custom domain.

Substack tries to keep its foot in the door when providing you with a link to share!

You know what I’m talking about: the page Substack shows after you schedule or publish an article. It prominently gives you a link to share for promoting it.

That’s nice and helpful, isn’t it?

What’s less than helpful is this link does not link directly to your article. Not when you’re using a Substack subdomain. Not when you’re using a custom domain.

They give you a link that does show your article immediately, but… it points to a page that’s within the reading experience of Substack’s own domain!

Now, I understand that Substack wants to grow too. And that its growth is, probably, good for my growth as well.

But if you, like me, want the full benefits of having my own domain, DO NOT SHARE the link they give you.

For example, for my initial post on Deliberate Difficult & Laughing it’s:

https://open.substack.com/pub/deliberatelydifficult/p/coming-soon?r=2ww51&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Don’t share that. NOT EVER. Only use direct links to your domain. Otherwise all effort to remain independent of Substack still goes down the drain when you leave it.

I’d edit the link above to be:
https://deliberatelydifficult.com/p/coming-soon

Even better: use the SEO URL. You’ll find it (and customize it) for any post via its settings (bottom right corner when editing it).

That’s it.

Enjoy!

1. DNS (Domain Name Service) is the internet’s version of a telephone book, providing browsers with a way to connect a domain name to an otherwise meaningless IP (Internet Protocol) address like 194.164.74.80.

2. That link is my affiliate link for Hostinger web hosting. I earn a small commission if you use it and buy something from them within a given (don’w know what) period.
At NO cost to you.
If you want to make sure there are no hidden costs, feel free to go straight to hostinger.com, but you may miss out on some discounts given to “friends” of affiliates.
In other words: I’d do both and pick the one that’s friendliest to my wallet ;)

3. I make full use of the ridiculously enormous discounts Hostinger and Siteground (both excellent providers, both affiliate links) extend when you FIRST sign up with them and commit to several years with them. After that period, I switch from one to the other.

The beauty: I get excellent hosting at a very low cost. Yes, switching from one to the other is a not quite a breeze, but easy enough. Simply create an account or take out a new hosting plan with the ‘new’ provider before your contract with your current one ends. That way you have time to move everything across and activate your new setup (getting DNSs - the Internet’s telephone books) to point to the new location before your current one expires. And this way you won’t lose any traffic at all!

4. HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. The file format all pages on all sites use to send a pages from an internet server to your browser.

5. A “bare” domain name, like 42sidenotes.com, is usually not where a site actually can be reached. This is more often the www subdomain, like www.42sidenotes.com. The fact that you can use either to reach a website is thanks to proper setup of the site’s DNS records (the Internet’s version of telephone book entries).