I was looking up domain names yesterday, and I noticed thripp.com became available. Someone was saving it with some ads before, but didn’t renew. I swooped it up and redirected it to richardxthripp.com/richardxthripp. But then after an hour or so I was thinking… isn’t thripp.com a better name for the site? It’s short, brandable, and doesn’t seem like a last name at all (not that that’s bad). I picked richardxthripp.com to make the site personable and unique, but thripp.com is even cooler.
Also, I’d grown accustomed to subdirectories for users, even though I originally wanted virtual subdomains but Netfirms wouldn’t have it. But three weeks ago I switched to SYN Hosting, and it turns out they do allow it.
I knew right then I should be richardxthripp.thripp.com, not this nonsense richardxthripp.com/thripp. Same for everyone here. So I changed the name and changed to virtual subdomains. It was a big pain because Wordpress MU (the software behind the site) isn’t designed to switch modes. I cleared the RSS caches with a script (trimming the database), downloaded the database (16MB in .sql), fired it up in metapad (a simple text editor), and replaced every instance of richardxthripp.com with thripp.com (23,000 of ‘em). Then I went through every blog and did a find and replace to switch to subdomains (tedious). Then I changed the signup and registration table structure with simple find and replace operations to switch to subdomains, turned vhosts on in wp-config.php, and relaunched. Oh, first, I changed every file and template that referenced richardxthripp.com.
Then, I had to redirect all the old addresses. I didn’t know how, so I asked. A brave soul provided the solution, so that your old URIs redirect to your new ones. richardxthripp.com/hong/whats-happiness-all-about-1 goes to hong.thripp.com/whats-happiness-all-about-1 automatically, for example. And if it doesn’t, pester me in the comments.
Had some trouble with WP Thread Comment so that threaded comments weren’t showing, but I used a PHP script to go through each blog’s options table and delete the settings, so they’d be refreshed on the next page load. And now it’s working.
Other than that, everything seems perfect! Except emails say they come from a@a instead of richardxthripp@thripp.com, but they send fine, including comment reply notifications and registrations. I’ll wait a day (just registered thripp.com yesterday), and see if it fixes itself.
This change actually went live yesterday at 17:30Z (1:30 P.M. EST), but I didn’t post here till I’d worked out the kinks. It’s a lot of effort to make change a domain name and URI structure… but so worth it when I see names like jt.thripp.com (instead of that ugly richardxthripp.com/jt). Better to do it now, with 144 users, than later, with ten times that. The logo is now a T instead of an R, formatted with neat blocks. 
I like the new one, because T represents connectedness, which is a good ideal for the network.
Still have to move my private gallery and email (through Gmail Apps for Your Domain) over, but the hard part is over. Thripp is cool because it’s short, memorable, and one syllable. And since you can register accounts as short as one letter, you can register now and get a cool name like i.thripp.com, or life.thripp.com, or almost whatever. My new home is richardxthripp.thripp.com, and my email is now richardxthripp@thripp.com.
Enjoy, and thanks for the support through this transition. If you watch my Twitter account, you’ve heard enough of it. Let me know in the comments if you see any bugs, and thanks!
Richard X. Thripp,
Creator of thripp.com 
