Domain Philosophy

LOS ANGELES now has a .la Domain Extension

LOS ANGELES is the world's first city to be awarded its own unique Internet address by getting the .LA extension.

Here is a link to where you can search and buy a .la domain:  http://www.la/

If you have a business in the LA area and want a cool domain extension to add to an existing .com address it might be worth buying these!

Keep searching! Ron

Register and Manage Your Own Domain Names: ROATDomains.com

ROAT Corp. has now added a full-service online registrar service which allows users to puchase, register, transfer, and maintain their own domain names.

This new website is http://www.ROATDomains.com/

In addition to domain names users can also purchase and manage the most common domain related products including email, hosting, and site promotion tools online.

Check out this new site.  Even if you don't buy any domains now you can still register for an account that you can then use later.

Ron

Domain Name "Who Is" Email Addresses

Recently, I have worked with several new clients to transfer their domain names to a new registrar so that we can manage their domain renewals and updates. The current owners did not have any login information for their current registrar and in the process of trying to retrieve the information we discovered that each of these domains did not have any email address assocated with the domain name other than the Admin Contact. Unfortunately, the Admin Contact was no longer at that email address so this didn't help us with gaining access to the account.

So, instead of the Primary Account or Technical Account email address being present a "placeholder" email was automatically put in its place by the registrar. The usual one was no.email@email.com or something similar.

The problem with this placeholder email is that domain renewals as well as username and password retrievals are sent to the primary account email address and if this is not a valid email they will never be received.

So, my advice for any domain name owner is to:

• Login to your registrar often and verify (at a minimum once per year) that your Primary, Admin, and Technical Contact email information is updated and correct.

Lastly, if you aren't comfortable monitoring/maintaining your own domain names consider having a company like mine take over the management of your domains to ensure the domain name remains valid into the future. Until next time, keep searching for that next domain name! Ron

http://www.roat.com/

ICANN Requires Annual Verification of Domain Contact Information

ICANN requires that all domain ownwers/registrants verify their domain contact information for accuracy at least once per year. This is part of what you agreed to when you "checked the box that says you will comply with the user agreement" when you purchased your domain name. In addition to the "annual requirement" part... there are many other reasons to do this... with one of the most important being:

• If your contact information (primarily the Admin contact's email address) isn't accurate you will not get expiration notices and your domain could expire.

Every registrar handles this requirement in different ways... some send emails and others mention it when you login to their site. Regardless, be sure you take the time to verify and update all your contact information for all domains you own at least once per year.

Imagine losing your domain name because your email address was no longer valid! Ron

What Characters Are Allowed in a Domain Name?

When searching for and registering a domain name... what characters can be used in a valid domain name? Here are the basic restrictions:

Can only contain ASCII alpha-numeric characters (Alpha: A-Z and Numbers: 0-9)

Can contain hyphens “-“.

Cannot start or end with a hyphen.

Maximum length of 63 characters.

Keep searching for the perfect domain name! Ron

Recommendation: Buy available domains immediately when searched and found

I asked the question, posted in the previous post, to a bunch of website developers and a few forums on domain names and everyone was in agreement and recommended the following:

"When you search for and find a domain name that you like (and will work for you) buy it immediately. If you find you don't need it... then sell it yourself. It is worth the $10 - $15 to get the domain instead of losing it and having to pay $100 the next day"

Apparently, there are those that have access to registrar data and speculate on that data to buy up domain names that are searched (and that have a likelihood of being purchased later).

Keep searching for that perfect domain name... and if you find it... BUY IT immediately! Ron

How does someone know to buy domain after it is searched?

Here is a scary issue... and I feel it happens way too often for it to just be a coincidence. I am posting this as a warning to anyone who is searching for a domain name... if you find a name that is available and you like it... you better purchase it immediately or you will risk losing it to someone who is looking to make a quick resell by tracking searched names!

Yesterday I searched a domain name for a client and when I went back to buy (after they approved it) it was gone. This is not a generic name and is an 18 character long .com domain! I have had this happen before and always just figured it was a bad coincidence but there is no way this was the case this time.

I searched this domain on DirectNIC and later that day it was registered under name.net.

Any ideas on how someone is scamming names (and then trying to resell them) based on recent searches with registrars? Am I just paranoid and has this happened multiple times to me only as a coincidence?

I know that if you have a trademark on the domain name you can legally challenge and often get the name that way but that seems like a lot of hassle to sue for a name just because you searched for it one day and then it was snatched only to be resold.

I know others have experienced this too... and it makes me wonder about the integrity of the registration system if there is a way to track searched names like this and then use this information to hold names hostage.

If you have information on how this is done please let me know... this can't be an acceptable use of a domain to do this... is it? Ron

.mobi Domain and Website Test

At first I was skeptical about the .mobi domain. But I have done a lot of reading about this domain concept and have found that the websites created (and hosted) for this domain can actually be quite engaging whether you access them via a phone/PDA or via a web-browser. So, I went ahead and purchased the roat.mobi domain. I paid $29.99 per year (two year minimum required) via GoDaddy.

My purchase and domain was approved immediately (I guess some can take a while) and I set up a very simple 2 page site just to get started with the design and layout requirements that the .mobi domain regulations require. Apparently, if a .mobi site isn't setup within these regulations your site can be set to not publish until it is within the specs.

I will post more about the .mobi site designs as I grow my site. Obviously, the bandwidth and screen sizes are the biggest issues... so I will post new articles as I figure this out.

In the meantime, get your phone or PDA out and go to http://roat.mobi/ and see my very simple site. My goal is to understand how we can use this .mobi for its intended purpose and see if all the press is accurate! So, although I am still unsure about the .mobi potential... I am willing to try it out and learn as much as I can. More later... Ron

Consolidate Your Domains for Efficiency

Recently I consolidated all my domains to two main registrars that I know and trust well. You may want to consider consolidating your domains as well if you own domains that are held at more than 3 registrars. This will decrease the workload of managing your domain information and will also help avoid forgetting about domains that are up for renewal (don't want to lose a domain because of this).

I realized I finally had to consolidate when I was spending hours and hours trying to figure out the various registrar systems to simply update nameservers or to renew expiring domains. With all the domains that we manage for the ROAT.com client sites... we were up to 12 different registrars!

The problem is... some registrars have horrible user interfaces... and they make it very difficult to do regular maintenance such as nameserver updates and even renewals. I guess if you only work within one registrar it might be ok as you would eventually learn how it works... but if you find yourself struggling with the user interface I would tend to ask myself the question "if the front-end is this bad... what is underneath and do I want to risk my domains with this company?"

I tend to like the DirectNIC and GoDaddy user interfaces and I know exactly where to find the things I need. So, making changes takes me seconds or minutes compared to 20-30 minutes with some other registrar. So, it just makes sense for me to consolidate my domains to registrars where I am this efficient.

Consider doing this too and you will eliminate a lot of frustration! Ron

Two "E's" Philosophy

What if a domain name you need has two "E's" in a row... will it effect the usefullness of a domain name and what can be done to minimize the mis-typing by users?

I get asked this question many times when a client's website name will have two "e" letters in a row. In this case I usually recommend we purchase both versions of the domain name to avoid the risk of mis-typing users and then make sure that all marketing materials for the domain name use capitalization properly to show that two "e" letters are in the name.

Let's say you need to buy the domain www.RakeEnough.com (not a real name). The two "E's" in a row could cause trouble for some users as they could misspell this domain name and users will either miss the website completely or will land on a competitor's website.

In this case I would recommend we purchase both www.rakeenough.com and www.rakenough.com and this will eliminate the mis-typing risk.

Keep this in mind with other possible mis-typing errors as well and try to purchase all the most likely mis-typed domains and simply point them all to the main website.

Keep searching and let me know if I can help! Ron