I opted to move my website to an Obsidian vault because I felt like it was a better representation of who I am, it is easier to update and edit, and I want to support the Obsidian project. It was in some ways very easy and in one way complicated but made easy by the help of other people. It doesn't take much time if you want to do the same. Here's a quick guide to my set-up, which you can replicate in one hour: ### 1: Buy your domain (20 minutes) I bought my domain a year and a half before I moved to this website format. You can buy your own domain at [Porkbun.com](https://porkbun.com/), and strongly recommend you do the same because of their extremely responsive and helpful customer support. Some options for your domain name, if you are setting up a personal website, include: * FirstNameLastName.com -- if this is available for you, I insist you get it. Even if you want other extension names, it is useful for professional reasons (ugh) to have a dot com. You can also more than one domain and make them point to the same place ! * FirstNameMiddleInitialLastName.com -- this is what was available for me * FirstMiddleandLastName.com -- good if you like your middle name * Name.me / Name.fyi / Name.info -- if you can get first name versions of any of your name interations at these domains, they are good too Your domain should run somewhere between $10-15/year. ### Download Obsidian.md (5 minutes) Free, no tracking, belongs to you, and infinitely customizable. If you want to run it as simple as possible out of the box, you can. If you want to tinker with plugins until it's the perfect work station for you, you can. [Download it here](https://obsidian.md/). Start writing. You'll be writing in markdown before the end of your first week. For guidance, [follow here](https://obsidian.md/help/install). If you already use a different note-taking app, [they make importing easy](https://obsidian.md/help/plugins/importer). See [[21 My Tools]] for my complete notes on Obsidian. ### Buy Obsidian Publish (5 minutes) The easiest step, Obsidian makes setting up an account, buying an Obsidian Publish sub (for one website in this instance) and getting-going the simple part of this exchange. You will complete this step in less than 5 minutes. [Do so here](https://obsidian.md/publish). Obsidian Publish costs $8/month if you buy in annual intervals. Then sign in to Obsidian, and do [the essential setup steps](https://obsidian.md/help/publish/setup). ### Link Your Custom Domain via Porkbun (30 min) I figured out how to do this so you don't have to. Obsidian already has a [thorough guide to custom domain linking](https://obsidian.md/help/publish/domains), but in it they say you must use a Cloudflare to do it simply. I refused to make an additional account for this process, and knew I could figure out how to do it via Porkbun with some trial and error. First, follow the first five steps of the CloudFlare instructions to the letter, except in Porkbun's setting. It is easy to do with [this highly visual setup guide](https://kb.porkbun.com/article/68-how-to-edit-dns-records) on Porkbun: 1. Open Porkbun to the domain where you want to host your Publish site, such as `mysite.com`, even if you want a subdomain like `notes.mysite.com`. 2. Go to **DNS** and click **Add Record**. 3. Select **CNAME**. 4. In **name**, enter your domain or subdomain, for example `notes.mysite.com`. 5. In **target**, enter `publish-main.obsidian.md`. Don't include your personal sub-URL in this value. Obsidian Publish handles this from your configuration. Then, steps 6 and 7 of the instructions read so: - Make sure that **proxy status** is enabled. It should be enabled by default. - Go to **SSL/TLS** and set the SSL/TLS encryption mode to "Full" to configure the SSL/TLS certificate automatically. HOWEVER, these options are not available for porkbun users. This roadblock is very fixable, and don't let it worry you. It turns out, these two settings are available to the dev managers at porkbun support, and they can toggle them for you. To activate them, send the following email to <[email protected]> and they will have your site set up almost immediately: #### Email PB Support "To PorkBun Support, My name is XXX and I own the domain YYY on porkbun. I am currently setting up my domain through [Obsidian Publish ](https://obsidian.md/publish) to serve as my personal website. I have followed [their instructions for linking my custom domain](https://obsidian.md/help/publish/domains) thus far and have to ask Porkbun Support to flip a switch for me on the back-end in order to get it running. Will you please go on my website's back-end and: * Make sure that **proxy status** is enabled? * set the SSL/TLS encryption mode to "Full" to configure the SSL/TLS certificate automatically? Thank you, NAME" ### That's it! When Porkbun has flipped the switch on their back-end, you'll be able to start publishing straight from your vault.