Well… You can Blog!! (And the crowd cheers)
Frankly.. to cover everything would very exhausting. Lets just focus on the fancy stuff eh?!! (When I say fancy I just mean things that won’t make the ninja angry. You can totally keep living your life like you do)
So all you need is a credit-card and with absolutely no ado you can choose a custom domain and link your blog to it. You just have to THINK (of a name for your custom domain) and PAY ($18 per year; less than 1000INR). And WordPress takes care of everything.
Eg: https://nikunjlahoti.wordpress.com becomes http://nikunjlahoti.com
All your existing links etc get redirected to the new address. There are a lot of TLDs like .ME, .COM etc that you can use.
For the rest of this post I am safely assuming that you have already bought the domain using WordPress. (Yes! There are ways to buy the domain yourself [think: http://godaddy.com] and then pay WordPress money to link it. Eventually you don’t get to save much. I would say as Tumblr.com does that for free so check that out today!)
Lets say your wordpress blog was: http://domain.wordpress.com
You got a brandnew custom domain name: http://mydomain.com
#2 (No! I wasn’t kidding before)
Get a http://blog.mydomain.com kind of URL for your Blog
I recently (5 minutes back) linked my Tumblr account [http://nikunjlahoti.tumblr.com] to my WordPress domain [http://nikunjlahoti.com]. Yeah that’s the place where I rant about topics not really related to technology or IT in general.
So as soon as you click on that Tumblr link above, it magically changes to [http://blog.nikunjlahoti.com]
I know it doesn’t make much sense to nest the blogs. But its a valid use-case.
Step1:
Login to your Tumblr blog
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/blogname/settings

Choose a CNAME (in this case “blog“)
A CNAME record or Canonical Name record is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS) that specifies that the domain name is an alias of another, canonical domain name. This helps when running multiple services (like an FTP server and a webserver; each running on different ports) from a single IP address. Each service can then have its own entry in DNS (likeftp.example.com and www.example.com).
– Wiki
Step2:
Go to: https://domain.wordpress.com/wp-admin/paid-upgrades.php?page=domains

Hit: “Edit DNS”
Add an entry: CNAME blog domains.tumblr.com
Save!

#3
Get a http://mail.mydomain.com kind of URL for your Email
me@nikunjlahoti.com
I mean how chic is that right?
Features:
Its powered by Gmail. Called Google Apps for business! You get an inbox of 10Gb. And there is Calendar, Docs and Sites.
In a free package you can create upto 10 email ids like that on your domain.
Btw, if you want an iamafan@nikunjlahoti.com email id then please let me know. I will be happy (wink) to do that. First lucky 5 people!! Ha!
How to:
Step1: Go to http://google.com/apps and Sign up Free Trial. Use a domain name I have already purchased (mydomain.com)
Step2: Verify site ownership. Use Add a <meta> tag to your home page
Go to: https://domain.wordpress.com/wp-admin/tools.php and paste that code. Save!

Come back and verify again. It will work!
Step3: Route the emails using Google servers
https://domain.wordpress.com/wp-admin/paid-upgrades.php?page=domains
“Edit DNS”
put in the following entries (as told by Google)
CNAME mail ghs.googlehosted.com.
MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
MX 5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
MX 1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
MX 10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
MX 10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
(refer to the first image)
It can take upto 48 hours for this to work but generally just takes less than 1 hour.
And we are done!

and as we wrap up, let me throw in a Productivity tip:
[sourcecode language=”css”]
your code here
[/sourcecode]
becomes
your code here
Honorary mention to Java:
class MyClass {
public static void main(String arr[]) {
System.out.println("Wordpress Code Highlights");
}
}
http://en.support.wordpress.com/code/posting-source-code/
Also, please notice the Doomsday Clock to the left!
Funny right? It would have been so much fun to see the countdown running. I guess it will eventually come!
Talking of which, I have written stuff on my Tumblr log — my non technical blog 😀 (almost non technical). Feel free to check it out.
Happy Hacking!