I started blogging about 2-1/2 years ago on SQLServerCentral.com and at the time it was the logical place for hosting. Fast forward and I’ve been chafing under the limited capabilities available there for bloggers, not even able to adjust the look and feel. I’m at a point where moving is something I want to do.

Back when I started I invested just a little thought in the initial branding, settling on ‘It Depends’. A good name, if maybe a little too generic, and I wasn’t able to get the domain – which didn’t matter at the time as it was hosted under the SSC domain. So, it’s time to move and with that the risk of losing some traffic, should I compound that and redefine my brand as well?

Perhaps the ideal is to make your name your brand, in my case andywarren.com was taken so I needed an alternative. I also spent some time thinking about my other interests; networking, management, business – should I go with something that reflect those broader interests, or something that made reference to my continuing and deep involvement with SQL Server?

After a few weeks mulling that over it seemed right to continue the SQL focus and accept the risk of needing to rebrand again at a later date. With that decided (right or wrong!), I decided to use something I already had begun to use on Twitter; @sqlandy. What made it really seem doable was that I was able to secure the LinkedIn vanity url for sqlandy and buy the sqlandy.com domain here as well. So while it might not be perfect branding, it’s consistent across the places I plan to participate.

I’ll have a follow up post soon on deciding about blogging platform and hosting, and I’ve still got to tackle a lot of work here plus trying to pull over as much content as I can from the old blog.