Wouldnt Something New And Different Help Me Stand Out
Possibly, but going against the grain involves many risks, and its important to know what they are. It may be tempting to go with novelty to stand out, but three decades of trust and ingrained user behavior around established domain extensions may be a large hurdle to overcome.
Many of the businesses and organizations that have been enticed to try out new domain extensions are experiencing unforeseen issues, such as customer confusion about their web address, and the technical limitations that compound that confusion. Reports of clients skepticism and operational problems, like incompatibilities with commonly used email validation systems, browsers, and other websites, has some small business owners urging caution to those interested in adopting new gTLDs.
Even some of the most experienced companies have found that choosing the wrong domain extension can have big consequences. Online retail giant Overstock.com switched to O.co in 2011 and learned this lesson first-hand. Overstock reportedly lost scores of visitors because customers instinctively typed in O.com and were greeted with an error message because it was not an active domain name. The customer confusion prompted Overstock to reverse its rebranding in less than a year millions of marketing dollars lost and customer confidence shaken.
Setting Up The Global Domain Name For Your Network
To set up the global domain name for your home network, go to System > Settings > General. Then enter a hostname for your OPNsense router and the default domain name for your entire network. In the example below, I would be able to access the OPNsense web administration page by going to router.homenetworkguy.com.
Note: It is not necessary to have a real domain name registered if you are just using the domain name internally on your network. However, if you do have a real domain name , you may also use it internally for devices on your network. If you use a real domain name, your local DNS server on your router will know how to resolve names for devices on your local network even if they those hostnames are not included the public DNS records. You only need to add/update the IP addresses of domains/subdomains of public DNS records if you plan to host publicly accessible services on your network.
Even though you do not have to use a real domain name for your local devices, you cannot simply use any domain name you want. The help message says to avoid using local as the domain name since it interferes with the Bonjour protocol, for instance. You should also avoid using domain names of real websites that you plan to visit. I imagine you will not be able to reach such websites since the local DNS server on your router will be trying to resolve that domain name to devices on your local network.
The History Of Domains
Although the internet didnt become a household utility until the 1990s, domains have existed since 1983. Still, they werent available for the public to register through the Domain Name System until 1986. What started with only a handful of domain extensions has now grown to include hundreds of top-level domains , thanks to expanded rules that allow people and organizations to create their own domain extensions.
Domains began as a solution to a formerly complicated way of getting to a website, which involved typing a series of numbers that were virtually impossible to remember. Now, domains are a must-have for internet browsing, giving us a streamlined way to remember our favorite websites by simply plugging the domain name into a browsers address bar.
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Heres Why So Many Domain Extensions Exist
Some domain extensions have an obvious purpose like .blog, while others might seem a little strange at first like .gs. Generally, all the domain extensions you see are designed to complete one or more of these functions:
- Help with branding for an individual company or an entire industry Like .aarp or .realtor.
- Indicate that a website is located in a certain country. This is useful for companies that only serve those countries and to break up the Internet into languages and currencies Think .cz for the Czech Republic or .de for Germany.
- Serve a specific community, based on geographic location, ethnic, technical, or other categories. The .asia domain extension is a good example, since it focuses more on a regional community as opposed to one country.
- Restrict usage of the top-level domain for people or organizations in a certain group. Take .edu, for example. Youre only able to use that domain extension if you run an accredited educational institution. The same can be said for many country or regional domains, where you must be a citizen of, or have a business in, the country.
Make Your Domain Name Memorable
Strive for domain names that are short, easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to say. This is valuable for word-of-mouth advertising because those visitors will need to visit your domain directly, but it also matters for processing fluency. An implicit cognitive bias, processing fluency is the concept that we remember and have more positive associations with things that we can easily say and easily think about, and that includes pronounceability in our own minds. So, stay away from domain names that include numbers or other non-standard characters, use unusual spelling, or are longer than about 15 characters or so.
Because of search engine’s growing reliance on accessibility and usability as a ranking factor, the easier a domain is to read for humans, the better it is for search engines.
From “15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs”
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Ly Sy Tv And Other Country Domains Are Risky Do Not Buy Them
Im updating this post to include a warning about .LY and other vanity domain names that belong to foreign countries. For example, .LY belongs to Libya and in the past, the registrar has been shut down due to wars within Libya. In 2011, this resulted in the company Letter.ly getting shut down because their domain expired during that shutdown and the domain was quickly snatched up by another company when they returned. These foreign-based registrars do not abide by US law and are extremely risky to purchase. For the record, .SY belongs to Syria and .TV belongs to the Tuvalu Islands, a series of nine slivers of earth in the middle of the South Pacific, with a population of about 10,000. Buy these extensions at your own risk.
What About Less Commonly Known Extensions
With 300+ available, we cant cover them all, but here are a few examples:
- .name – For use by individuals only.
- .me – Good for personal branding, or if you can cleverly make it part of your business name . Some of the other more obscure extensions could work that way, as well.
- .pro – For registered professionals only hasnt caught on.
- .tv Technically for websites in Tuvalu, this is open to everyone and is a good option for a television-related site.
- Specialty domains such as .aero and .travel are reserved for their specific industries and might be a good choice only if your customer base and business associates are extremely well-accustomed to the domain extension.
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Why So Many Suffixes
When you start the process of selecting your domain name, youll notice that theres a myriad of choices for domain suffixes. The most commonly used alternative suffixes used are .net and .org, but theres a wide range of generic suffixes such as .pizza. There are also country-specific domain names, such as .uk or .us and even brand specific domain names like .apple and .comcast.
So why do people use alternative domains for their websites? The most common reason is that the .com version of their website is not available. Sometimes, the .com, .net, .org and other TLD suffixes generally used for domain names are taken, leaving one no alternative but to choose an alternative suffix.
A question we encounter frequently is whether a domain suffix really matters for a website. The short answer, is yes, the type of suffix use makes a significant impact on the performance of your site.
What If My Com Name Is Not Available
Well, there are a few workarounds here, such as utilizing a hyphen or an underscore. If you choose do so, limit yourself to one to avoid looking spammy — but consider the possibility of missed opportunities when you tell someone, Thats gregs-kielbasa.com. They may get back to the office and forget the hyphen, or type in gregsdashkielbasa.com. Youre rolling your eyes, , but it happens.
To avoid these mishaps, consider using keywords in your domain instead of your company name. Could you choose a domain name that is not your company name? For example, you could choose the domain name PremiumKielbasa.com. Keywords in domain names are not as helpful to SEO as they once were, but as long as you arent trying to game the system with something like PremiumAllBeefKosherClevelandKielbasa.com, it wont hurt!
If you’re concerned about branding, you could always purchase a branded URL later and redirect it to your generic domain name. This is a considerable project, however, as each individual page must be redirected.
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Dont Forget Local Tlds
With the rise of local SEO, you could also consider targeting a specific geographical area that youre in. There are over 200 different country code TLDs, so you should be able to find something that matches your location. Common ones include .us for the United States, co.uk for the United Kingdom, and .ca for Canada.
Which Of These Domain Extensions Should You Go With
To start the process, consider what type of business or organization youre trying to represent online.
If youre only conducting business in a certain country, you might want to stand out with a country-based extension like .us. Beyond branding, you can also use a country-specific domain name to indicate to Google that your site targets that region .
If youre targeting people around the world, your best bet is unrestricted domain extension, though.
For this, you have a few options:
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Hostpapa: Best Uk Web Host & Domain Provider
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When comparing HostPapa to BlueHost, HostPapa really does give them a run for their money. They too provide a free domain , 100GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth and a free SSL certificate.
As for the price, it starts at a comfortable £1.95/mo when registering for the 3-year plan with a renewal price of £6.49.
While HostPapa is a fantastic provider, I had to mark them down as BlueHost is WordPresss top recommendation.
Overall, HostPapa is an all-round great web host and domain provider for those making a UK based small business website. Cant go wrong!
Dont Buy A Dropped Domain Unless You Aware Of The History Of The Domain
I once saw a real estate website that had formerly been a Japanese adult site. Even if any penalties or negative association had been scrubbed in search engine ranking algorithms, you can imagine that the backlinks to that site were not pretty.
Theres no reason to be affiliated with negative topics when there are so many potential domains in the world.
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The Essential Guide To Inbound Marketing
Thanks to technology even the smallest of brands can gain worldwide recognition, your target audience will be searching for solutions, youve just got to provide the right information. If you dont offer the content theyre searching for, you cant expect anyone to find you. Download the guide to learn basics about Inbound Marketing.
Think Before You Use The Dto Pattern
Let me preface this blog post by saying that there are still times when a DTO makes sense. Also, this post is written from a .NET perspective, so some things may be different on your platform. What I want to address though is the tendency of many developers to just automatically create a set of DTOs for each layer for each domain model. As I mentioned in other blog posts, you should always think about why you are doing something before you are doing it. Reasons like this is the way we have always done it or this is the best practice do not stand up to scrutiny. A dispassionate assessment of an approach should be taken before engaging in a practice. You should also be able to defend your choice in a technical debate without falling back on regurgitated lines like Im all about clean code.
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Arent Shorter Names More Memorable Though If The Domain Is Shorter Does The Extension Really Matter
Length is only part of the equation. More than anything, youll want potential visitors to recognize and trust your domain extension so they will visit your website. User trust in the internet is waning with the daily reports of data breaches and identity theft. Businesses already have so many hurdles to overcome in their daily operations. Why add user skepticism of your domain name to the pile? Unusual domains can create a challenging dynamic that can be overcome, but people need to understand that they are basically signing up for a handicap, and thats the last thing most businesses owners are looking to do.
My advice is to follow the leaders. Every Fortune 500 company and most of the top startups have .com domain names. Successful companies like buy .com domain names on the secondary market, passing up other domain extensions entirely, because they know that its a smart and secure investment for their future. Even domain and SEO experts agree that a long .com domain name is better, more memorable, and less confusing to consumers than a short domain name on a lesser-known domain extension.
Registering A Generic Tld
If you want to create a website in multiple languages or reach an international audience, you should register a generic TLD. That way, you can create subfolders or subdomains for each language or market.
The .com domain extension is by far the most popular with over 50% of all websites on the internet using it. Even if you dont have any international ambitions, it’s a great choice. You cant go wrong with a .com domain name.
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