bajaj.com turns 28 this year, marking nearly three decades of evolution through the shifting landscape of the Internet. From its humble beginnings in 1997 as an information portal to its current role, the site has continuously adapted to new technologies and trends.
Here’s a retrospective for those who may have missed its journey:
- A nod to the early internet era when domains were registered through InterNIC and Network Solutions at a cost of $100 USD for two years—before which registrations were free, leading to rampant cybersquatting.
- Back then, recovering a domain from a cybersquatter was no simple feat. Either InterNIC had to enforce its Lame Delegation Policy (which was rarely done), or one had to wait 60 days past the expiry date for it to become publicly available.
- The site originally operated on shared hosting in the U.S. before transitioning to self-hosted infrastructure in Canada. In April 2008, it evolved into a blog, gaining traction through listings on portal sites, search engine visibility, and inbound links, which briefly attracted advertising.
- On the technical side, bajaj.com spent almost 15 years running on a Dell PowerEdge 700 with an Intel Pentium IV processor, hosting WordPress on FreeBSD. After retiring the Dell server in 2019, it remained self-hosted—first on a Synology DS 1019+ NAS, then transitioning to Proxmox VE containers with Nginx Proxy Manager for enhanced flexibility.
- Today, the site remains forward-thinking, accessible from IPv6-only networks, optimized with HTTP/2 and secured with DNSSEC.
bajaj.com continues to stand as a testament to digital evolution—an enduring presence in the ever-changing online landscape.