Category Archives ⇒ Domains

New Domain TLDs – A Real Possibility for Q1 2013

· Brandon Hann

Back in June, it was announced that ICANN revealed a list of over a thousand new domain gTLDs (generic top level domain) could be released to the internet sometimes in early 2013. For those that don’t know, ICANN is the governing body that presides over and from time to time, they take in applications from companies and individuals alike who wish to see a new (and hopefully functional) domain TLD put out on the market.

The most recent addition to this namespace was the .XXX domain. After months of back and forth wrangling, the new domain extension was finally put into action with a goal of being able to separate adult websites from the rest. This new extension met with criticism by those who compete in the industry because many people felt that a new extension does nothing but pollute it. Those who supported the initiative said it would be much easier for network admins to block entire domain names at the extension level rather than trying to pin down individual websites.

Some of the TLDs expected to be approved are .BLOG, .WEB, .LOL, .ONLINE and .SHOP. If these and others are approved, it will change the internet namespace forever. As it is, there are over 200 TLDs available for registration, but most of them are just 2-character designators created for each country in the world. Some countries have been successful at selling domains by promoting their use for specific niche markets to English-speaking countries such as what Tuvalu did with .TV, Montenegro did with .ME and the Federated States of Micronesia did with .FM. Less than successful pitches came from [Western] Samoa with .WS (promoted as “Web Site”), Laos with .LA (promoted as “Los Angeles”) and the Democratic Republic of Congo with .CD (promoted as “compact disc”).

The new TLDs will completely change the conventional thought process behind the registration of domain names. When domains first came out, there was an attempt to separate commercial (.COM) companies, networks (.NET) and organizations (.ORG), but shortly after, the domain space was pretty much opened to anyone with the money to cover the registration costs. With new TLDs like .BLOG and .SHOP, the attempt to sort the web is back. However, once again, there are no regulations in place that would keep people from registering a .BLOG domain and putting an adult website there.

Each proposed domain that gets approved can either be hoarded for private use or be used to sell second-level domains to consumers. For example, if Google wins the rights to .BLOG, they can decide to allow users to register new domains such as MYAWESOME.BLOG or TECHNOLOGY.BLOG or just keep it for themselves. It’s only $25,000 annually for Google to own .BLOG!!

My Thoughts

Google gTLD listThe most interesting part about this whole process is that every application that was sent to ICANN carried with it a $185,000 fee just to have the TLD evaluated! In the case of Google, they have applied for over 100 TLDs! I hope they get a few approved because I’d love to set up some new websites under the .BLOG domain.

But at the same time, I think that releasing so many TLDs at one time would seriously dilute the spectrum. I imagine myself as the owner of Ledfrog.com and having to register over 2,000 variants just to lock down my name at every possible corner of the web!

This also doesn’t bode well for those who make money from registering domain names and selling them to people months or even years down the road for a hefty markup. Right now something like BUSINESS.COM is worth millions to the right person, but add in over 2,000 other versions of it and people might be more inclined to settle for a lesser known extension just to save the money.

Also, what’s the point of some of these requests? Feel free to look over the entire list (including multiple submissions for the same domain) and please tell me what we need .BOO for? Or how about .CHK? I understand that many companies and corporations are submitting TLDs to completely wipe out the need for having to type in any “dot” after their name like with Canon trying to get the TLD .CANON, but seriously…I think this is going a little too far.

However, that hasn’t stopped the speculating guy in me! I found out that at least one company is making an attempt to pre-order new TLD domains free of charge. Of course there are no guarantees, but they say their success rate for acquiring domains for the .XXX extension was about 47%. If anything, placing a free pre-order will allow you to stay informed of the changes coming (if and when) as well as possibly even being able to to secure a nice second-level domain that you haven’t been able to get in the .COM world. To check out the pre-order system, visit UnitedDomains.com.

Ledfrog.com is 11 Years Old Today

· Brandon Hann

Today is the 11th anniversary of Ledfrog.com. This was the day back in 2000 that I submitted my first domain application to solidify my presence on the Internet which was still a growing force not nearly the size that it is today. Here’s a little back story on the domain and why I decided to register it.

AOL 3.0

Readers of my site and those that know me personally most likely already know this part of the story, but it fully explains how the name “ledfrog” came to be. When the Internet was first starting out, there was a plethora of random companies offering services to get you online and it was often a confusing and tedious process—usually ending in a frustrated user with no email. America Online came out of this mess with software for Windows 3.1 back in January of 1993. It was to be the start of an online empire and the most popular Internet software/service the world would ever see.

I didn’t jump into the AOL world until version 3.0 (June of 1996) when we got our Windows 95 computer, but when I did, I was hooked! The thought of having access to the entire world and to be able to communicate with thousands of users anywhere at any given time just excited me.

I can’t remember what my first screenname was, but I do remember it having some numbers in it. See, back in those days there were so many people on AOL, that it seemed like no matter what screenname you came up with, you had to put numbers on it just to make it unique. Well, I sat out to change that. I wanted a short, pronounceable name that had no numbers, didn’t incorporate my real name and wouldn’t be something I’d regret using after growing up.

On July 22, 1998 I was 16 years old and sitting in front of my parent’s computer thinking of that name. At the time, I was using a picture of a small tree frog for my desktop background and listening to Led Zeppelin. It was that simple. Ledfrog was born.

Domain Name

While in high school, a friend and I started building cheap little websites that were hosted on free webservers like FreeYellow.com and Xoom.com. These sites were nothing more than collections of pictures and links for things we were interested in at the time, but for me, they were the start of a new hobby. The problem was that when I do something, I like to do it “pro” so I got tired of having a weblink that looked like: http://www.freeyellow.com/members/pages/username/index.html and wanted something more like http://www.something.com.

At the time, there weren’t any companies like GoDaddy.com where you can register about any domain you want in a matter of seconds. Before, you actually had to print out a paper application, fill it out by hand and send it off with a check for 2 years of registration minimum. It was $35 per year back then!

So again, I sat there thinking—this time of what domain I wanted to get. On a sidenote, I really wish I had a lot of money at this time. Looking back at how many valuable domain names were still available just blows my mind. But like any investment, there are never any guarantees. Most of us never would have thought the domain business would get to where it is.

Anyway, wishing to spend my $70 wisely, I opted to stay with the ledfrog name and decided to create a brand out of it. From that point forward, this domain has served as a fan site for Metallica, an FTP server, a collection of links to popular “hacking” tools for AOL and other things, a personal page for me, an FTP server again, a blank page, a forwarded page to other domains and now finally (since 2008), a blog mostly about technology. I remember one of the greatest satisfactions I got while running the FTP server was when I asked a co-worker one day if he knew where I could download a particular freeware program and he said, “There’s a site I found called Ledfrog.com that has a lot of stuff…you could try there.” I was floored that someone actually knew my site without me telling them about it!

I’ve come a long way with this domain and through the years I’ve owned well over 80 different domains, sold a few and made some money, started websites and failed, had ideas that never materialized but had fun each and every day. For me, Ledfrog.com had withstood the time and is currently my oldest and most active domain. It is here to stay for quite a while!

New TLDs to come in the domain namespace

· Brandon Hann

The votes are in…as of today, the heads of the Internet (as I like to call them), ICANN has voted to allow virtually an unlimited amount of new domain names to be made available for registration. To see what I mean, let’s break down a current domain name:

ledfrog.com is a 2nd-level domain registration within the .com namespace. With .com being a top-level domain (TLD) that allows unregulated registrations in the 2nd level, anyone can register a .com domain if it’s available.

Throughout the years, new TLDs or extensions were adding to the domain system to help alleviate demand for domain names. Among vanity extensions such as .travel, .info and .biz, each country in the world was assigned a 2-character country code to allow those countries to offer domains to its citizens. More recently, ICANN approved the use of .xxx specifically for adult-content sites.

This system has worked rather well consider how old DNS is! However, with the advent of new technology and masses of people jumping online each and every day, large companies have had to register handfuls of domains just to protect their brands and trademarks. With over 300 TLDs currently available, these costs can add up. Current registration costs can range from $7 to $600 per year for each domain. That’s even if they can get their brand as a domain. Dealing with cyber-squatters and other infringers have likely cost companies millions of dollars.

The future of domains appears to be the availability of new, custom registrations of top-level domains. Imagine Apple Inc. being able to own .apple or .iphone!

To be honest, when I first heard this news, I was worried. I feel like part of the domain system is the uniqueness of it—the rarity of it. Of course, this could just be me looking at it from a business standpoint, but I’m under the impression that offering these unlimited domains will essentially devalue domains as a whole.

That was until I found out about the registration costs! ICANN has announced that each application will carry a fee of $185,000 while annual renewal of the domain will cost $25,000. This should stop 99% of the spammers out there for sure!

It’s clear that these domains will be somewhat of a luxury for large coporations and/or the rich individual who might want to register some generic domain name like .car or .games which makes me feel better about not letting another million useless websites appear online overnight from people looking to make money off selling a domain name.

While this new plan seems like a good idea on the surface, another concern I have is how the public will accept this. Anyone who follows the domain industry knows how hard it has been to promote any domain other than .com, so how will this be any different? The Internet world is so used to typing in something and then following it with .com or another known extension, but this is just confusing. Typing in .apple just doesn’t make sense, but I guess that’s what people said 30 years ago when people were just learning about the Internet.

I’ve been on the Internet since 1997 and I’ve seen a lot of changes in the domain industry and this is by far the largest of them all. But one thing has remained true throughout all of it—nobody remembers a domain extension as well as a .com domain. In this case, only time will tell if this will change.

World IPv6 Day – June 8, 2011

· Brandon Hann

As usual, I’m late to the game! It’s a good thing I don’t purport myself to be a newscaster of any form because sometimes I feel like I’m the last to know. Even after I discussed the death of IPv4 the other day, I still wasn’t aware of June 8, 2011. But as it stands, June 8 is the day where 243 huge Internet organizations will participate in a 24-hr “test flight” of IPv6 across their servers and networks.

World IPv6 Day

On this day, the likes of Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Akamai will be offering their websites and services over the IPv6 protocol. The basic idea behind this plan is to motivate other industry leaders and hardware manufacturers to continue getting devices and services ready for the new protocol.

Fortunately, these changes will be transparent to end-users, so there will be nothing special you need to do in order to see your favorite websites. Computers and hardware have in one way or another supported IPv6 for some years now, but if you want to verify this, proceed to the test site that’s been setup to run a series of tests on your computer system. It will tell you your current IPv6 compatibility and what, if anything, you can do to fix problems.

I’ve been an active Internet user for many, many years and I’ve often wondered how long it would take to run out of IPv4 addresses and as of February 11, 2011, we no longer have to wonder because it’s happened! There will come a day when IPv4 is no longer supported and it’s important now to ensure that systems across the world are able to operate on the new protocol.

More information

The Internet Society (isoc.org) is probably your best bet for obtaining more (and updated) information about this event, so I’ve posted some direct links here for you to get the information you need:

Multiple WordPress Multi-User Installations

· Brandon Hann

I’ve scoured the Internet looking for the answer to this question and I have found it. The question was, can you you install multiple WordPressMU blogs and have them run under one webhost. The short answer is no. However, as with most things in the online world, it is possible with the right “tool”.

If you’re wondering why I would want to have two separate installs of this, it’s because I have more than one client on my web server, each of which are running their own sites. This is fine for most applications, but when you start dabbling in things like SSL certificates and wildcard sub-domains, that’s when the trouble starts. These are just two items that require their own IP address.

One of my clients would like to run multiple blogs on his WordPress Network, but because I’m already doing that for Ledfrog.com, I’m essentially blocking him from doing so. This is because Ledfrog.com is the main domain on my server and any changes utilizing different ports such as 443 for SSL certificates or services like WordPressMU that use wildcard sub-domains have to go through the server’s IP address and since this IP is assigned to my domain, his will not work.

The way WordPressMU works is once you convert your WordPress install into a network, you have the ability to add new sites to it. These sites utilize all of the main structure of the original WordPress installation while creating a separate blog directory inside the wp-content folder to store all of that blog’s specific files such as media uploads and so forth. Plugins and theme are then made available to all sites provided that you (the network admin) have made them available. The advantages here are that you no longer have to install a whole new copy of WordPress, create a new database, download all the same themes and plugins or manage different webhost accounts every time you want to start a new blog. Everything except the media files are shared. You can imagine how much faster updates are too!

Anyway, to make this happen, you need to create a wildcard sub-domain ‘A’ record in your DNS server that points *.yourdomain.com to your server’s IP address. This is needed because when you create a new site on your network, a virtual subdomain is created. An example of this is my personal blog site, Ledfrog.me. When I created it in my network, I was actually creating me.ledfrog.com.

The real magic happens with a feature called Domain Mapping. This is where you can map a real domain (provided it’s been added to your DNS server) to any virtual WordPress site you have created. Using the same example, I was able to map the domain Ledfrog.me to my virtual blog, me.ledfrog.com, so when you access either of those URLs, you’ll wind up at Ledfrog.me. Make sense?!

WordPressMU Domain Mapping

So all this is fine and dandy when you’re working with one server, one IP address and one main domain, but in my case, another client of mine would like to create his own network. The problems begin when you try to create the wildcard sub-domain. While doing this is possible and serves a valuable function—allowing him to create his own real sub-domains—it does nothing for WordPressMU!

I’ve contacted my webhost, I’ve ran all over Google and even tried Bing out for the first time looking for some help with this and eo far I’ve found two answers. First, I keep getting sent to sets of instructions that allow you use vhost.conf files in your client’s vhost container to allow the use of a wildcard sub-domain. This process basically has you creating a conf file that you then configure into Apache to tell the server that you want it to be included into the configuration for that site. It’s great for adding site-specific features to httpd.conf without affecting your whole server.

The second answer I get is the correct one. You can’t use WordPressMU on two separate installations without an additional static IP address! To verify this, all you have to do is install it on another client on your same server and watch what happens when you try to access one of the the virtual blog sites. Here’s what it does:

Domain1.com is the main domain attached to the server’s ONLY IP address.
site2.domain1.com is a virtual blog site created inside the WordPressMU installation.
site2.com is the domain that is mapped to the sub-domain above.
If you access site2.com, you are really only looking at site2.domain1.com.

Domain2.com is in another client’s hosting account on the same server and same IP address.
site2.domain2.com is a virtual blog that’s created inside the WordPressMU installation.
If you access site2.domain2.com, you are redirected to Domain1.com with an error about registrations being closed.

The reason for that is because site2.domain2.com is being read as a sub-domain of Domain1.com!!

I hope you’re not confused. More so, I hope someone who reads this is laughing their head off because they know the way around all this. Oh and by the way, I’m not try to escape having to purchase a separate IP address. It’s just that my host won’t sell me one without a valid reason and apparently this doesn’t count because they said it’s possible to use one address!

International Domain Speculation

· Brandon Hann

As any domain owner will tell you, domain speculation is a rough game. In fact, it’s very similar to the stock market in some sense. No, the value of a domain doesn’t fluctuate with rising and falling markets, per se, but the risk of “guessing” which domains will have resell value now or later is just as high as it is on Wall Street.

When thinking about this topic, I was browsing around the Internet and came across a few articles about International domains and with the few new TLDs that have been launching auctions for previously reserved domains, it’s hard not to want to dive in head first and buy all the good domains available.

The problem? Nobody can accurately predict the value of such names and the reason for this is because there are so many factors that play into what they might actually be worth with the worst part being that these factors vary depending on who you talk to!

International Domains (ccTLD)

ccTLD is short for Country Code Top-Level Domain. These are the 2-character TLDs that were assigned to each country in the world. There were a few reasons to do this, one of which was to increase the amount of domains available for registration and also to provide each country with a domain that pertains specifically to them.

However, what this also did was allow domain speculators and other individuals who felt they missed out on the booming domain industry to start registering the same domain names that were selling for hundreds of thousands, but in a new TLD. While this sounds like a master plan, one must be reminded that every TLD is valued differently and in an industry where value is extremely subjective, this is troubling to hear.

So how does one value an International TLD?

Digital Gold Rush

The best domains aren’t always the obvious ones. For example, you might be tempted to register Business.de because Business.com sold for $7 million at one point, but you might be better off registering Geschäft.de (business in German).

Other valuable domains might be really short ones that can be used for URL shortening services like the one I got, xi.io for example. You might even be considering a “domain hack” like te.am, assu.me, ballga.me or fres.co. Whatever the case may be, you could be sitting on a gold mine or bust out like so many others who jumped on a bandwagon.

No matter the case, every time a new TLD is launched, a frenzy ensues and all over the Internet, you can see articles and postings about launch dates, sunrise periods, pre-registrations, trademark reservations, general registration, premium auctions and domain valuations. It seems that the latest trend is the premium auction feature. This is where the country or (registrar acting on behalf of the country) has decided to place a series of “premium” domains on reserved lists, generate some buzz and then release them in specialized blocks in hopes to squeeze the most value out of a domain.

No other TLD was more successful at this process than dotME.

dotME Domains

The dotME TLD comes from the country of Montenegro. Their site, Domain.me will have you believe (in short time) that dotME domains are the greatest thing since sliced bread! Their ability to promote and market their cause is unparalleled in the business.

The first thing they did was reserve thousands of domain names, marked them as premium and put them up for auction. Back in April, they auctioned off a ton of first names like Michael.me, Jack.me, Chris.me and so on. I was able to acquire Brandon.me and that’s all I needed.

On November 17th, Sedo auctioned off another large block that netted about $400,000. TheDomains.com posted a list of the top selling dotME domains if you want to check it out. While you’re at it, head on over to Domain.me and check out some of their upcoming premium auctions.

Here’s the top five from that list:

  1. Like.me: $26,500
  2. contacts.me: $15,600
  3. game.me: $13,100
  4. poker.me: $12,099
  5. friend.me: $10,099

What’s interesting about this list is that the domain Business.me was far down it having sold for $4010. This goes to show that not only is dotME simply not dotCOM and never will be. But another interesting point is that Business.me doesn’t seem to make sense in the dotME spectrum. The reason for this is because dotME forces the word “me” when you see it. This makes dotME perfectly suitable for personal blogs and other domains that use words that work with the word “me”.

My Two Cents

The point to this post was that International domains can be great additions to any portfolio and they might hold some value to someone somewhere, but generally speaking, the TLD will make a huge difference in the value of a domain. So when you’re out there speculating your next purchase, make note of how others might relate to your domain choices.

Yet another URL shortening website!

· Brandon Hann

UPDATE (Oct 26, 2010) :: I disbanded my original URL shortening service and have created a new one with an even shorter URL! I’m leaving this page up for posterity, but I’ve changed the links where applicable. Also, I wrote about my new URL shortening service, so you may want to head on over there first!

This time, it’s mine!! After I got onto Twitter and Facebook, I starting noticing all these little weird looking links and came to realize they were just pointers to much longer links. URL shortening services have sprung up just about everywhere. The issue of really long links is more of a problem to Twitter users because you only have 140 characters to type your message, but they’re starting to gain traction for just about every use. Use my new URL shortener to shrink you long urls today!

You would want to/need to shorten a url when you don’t have much space to post one or you want to make it easier for someone to remember. Now, there are tons of sites out there that can shorten long links into something tiny, but I didn’t want to trust my links in the hands of some fly-by-night service. Instead, I opened my own service and now I’m offering the service to everyone.

xi.io URL shortener

What is it?

Take this link for example: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FKindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation%2Fdp%2FB0015T963C%3Fpf_rd%5Fm%3DATVPDKIKX0DER%26pf%5Frd%5Fs%3Dcenter-1%26pf%5Frd%5Fr%3D0Y2V14K8W4X1MTQ9XB9B%26pf%5Frd%5Ft%3D101%26pf%5Frd%5Fp%3D1253201642%26pf%5Frd%5Fi%3D507846&tag=ledfrog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325. It’s a direct link to Amazon.com’s Kindle page. Now, imagine you’re on Twitter and you want to send that to your followers. It’s not going to happen.

Instead, you drop on by my new site and create a link that looks like this: http://xi.io/8m. Much nicer, wouldn’t you agree? In fact, this URL went from being 358 characters long down to only 15! That’s a difference of 343 characters!! You can use these links for any purpose and the best part is, you can also search for keyword text, so instead of getting a randomly generated number, you can get a text phrase (if available).

How is this site different?

It’s not so much different in features as it is in name. Other services such as goo.gl, bit.ly and u.nu all offer the same services, but as you can see, they all use International domain names.

Personally, I find two things wrong with this. The first reason is that the links are not universally recognized by a lot of Internet users. If fact, I’ve talked to some people that say they never click on links like that at all! This can provide low click-through ratios for your links.

The second reason is that these domain names are controlled by the countries who own the extension. This can, although probably not likely, lead to the domains becoming obsolete or even being taken back by the local government.

What can you do with a shortened URL?

The uses for this service are only limited to your creativity! Here are some ideas:

  • Use shorter links for Twitter posts
  • Cloak affiliate links
  • Mask a long URL for marketing materials
  • Use a shorter URL for your site to make it easier to tell your friends how to get there

This service is free and allows you to make an unlimited amount of links. Check it out by going to xi.io now!

DomainMonkeys.com

· Brandon Hann

I’ve dealt with my share of registrars in the past, but this one is by far the strangest. I’m writing this blog entry because I want to share my experience with the transferring of a domain I have registered with them while the process is going on to shed some light on any issues that occur for your future knowledge.

First off, I used SnapNames.com to acquire my full name as a domain so I can redirect it to this site. Since SnapNames is a domain backordering service, it needs to utilize many registrars in order to win the backorder race from other services like it. Because of this, any domain you ‘win’ from SnapNames will have been registered at a random registrar and then login details will be emailed to you in order to manage the domain.

The problems arise when you use one registrar for all your domains and you now have this new domain somewhere out there in a space that might not allow the same controls as your preferred registrar. The other problem is that you can’t transfer a domain until it’s been at the current registrar for 60 days.

Anyway, SnapNames registered my new domain over at DomainMonkeys.com and I must say that I’m surprised this company gets any business with the way it’s run and the lack of services and features that you can use on your domains. Regardless, I want my new domain in my GoDaddy account and on Sunday (1-10) I placed a transfer order there. In the past, all you needed to do was unlock the domain from the losing registrar and then retrieve the transfer codes to input into the site, but now, you have to wait for the “Transfer Concierge” to do things.

So I wait. And what happens? Well, because DomainMonkeys’ whois server is not using the standard port 80, no other whois servers can access it and therefore appears down. Now I have to wait for some type of human interaction on GoDaddy’s part to move this thing along.

As of this writing, I’m stuck of step 1 of 4 and the actual message I’m getting is:

Step 1: Initiate
Transfer is waiting for the Transfer Concierge to address a whois data problem. We were unable to get the whois data from the losing registrar. The Transfer Concierge will resolve this issue.
Recommended Action:
No customer action is required at this time.

I’ve already unlocked the domain and have even requested the authorization code, but since I can’t input it, I’m stuck waiting!

UPDATE – Jan 16, 2010

A couple days ago, I was moved up to step 3 which is the Accept or Decline step and normally when you receive an email from the losing registrar that someone is trying to transfer your domain away. At this point you can allow it or not. This is all contingent on two things: 1, the domain is not in “transfer lock” status and 2, you have the correct email address set for the admin contact. I have satisfied both of these requirements. I have the domain in “ok” status and is ready for transfer and I also have the right admin email address.

Easy enough, right? I should have been transferred by now. But no, I’m still waiting for that accept/reject email and there’s no way to force it through at DomainMonkeys.com! So, back at GoDaddy, it says that if the domain transfer is not accepted or rejected within 5 days, the transfer will proceed.

Well it looks like after about 7 days after everything was started, the domain is now resting comfortably in my GoDaddy account. I’m feel much better now.

Review of DomainMonkeys.com

If the first indicator of their professionalism didn’t come from the fact that their name contains the word “monkeys” in it, then maybe a quick look at their homepage did the trick. Here’s a screenshot as of today (Jan 18th, 2010):

DomainMonkeys.com homepage

The rule is and always has been, never judge a book by its cover, but this website is lacking everything but the cover. First off, my impression is that this company is simply one of the hundreds, if not thousands of ‘dummy’ registrars setup by sites like SnapNames.com, Pool.com and whoever else in an effort to add more outlets to snap up all the deleting domains coming out each day. I came to this conclusion because I discovered this site after a successful auction with SnapNames. They also don’t sell any other services or even try to offer you any type of support.

Down to the nitty gritty. There’s five links on the homepage. There’s one for the Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, WHOIS, Support and my favorite: Domain Updates. The first three require no explanation so we’ll start with the support page. It’s a very basic form that you have to manually fill out completely and this is also where you can apparently order new domains, although I wouldn’t recommend it because I can only guess as to where you’re supposed to type in your credit card number. And even after I guessed, I’d probably still be wrong. They do have a support number located at a 303 area code, but I get the feeling that I’d be dialing a rotary phone sitting on a tv tray in someone’s living room.

Updating your domain for those of you who use sites like GoDaddy, Register.com, Moniker, etc. is fairly an easy process and these days, you can probably add all sorts of free services to spice up your cool domain. The best part about DomainMonkeys’ domain update page is the login requirements!

As an example, say your domain is: LEDFROG.COM, your email is: nothing@nothing.com and your password is: passw0rd. This is how you login:

You click on the Update link from the homepage and you’re taken here:

DomainMonkeys.com Login page

In the account verification box, you are to type in this string: ledfrog.comnothing@nothing.compassw0rd

No joke. That’s the login. All three. All together. No spaces. Plain text.

…

Once you’re in, you’re golden until you want to transfer your domain to someone else. More on this later as the developments of my own transfer unfold!

Final decision: I will never use DomainMonkeys to register any new domains and I’m likely to never deal with them again unless I’m forced to by SnapNames.

Domain Hacking Using International TLDs

· Brandon Hann

Originally, I had my blog located on what they call a “hacked” domain. I acquired the domain ERIO.US (hacked into myst.erio.us) a few years back. The plan was to create a personal blog space and I liked the name because it sounded rather mysterious. The problem was trying to get people to the site via word-of-mouth!

More often than not, people didn’t remember the little periods and ended up somewhere they didn’t want to be. At any rate, domain hacks were kind of born out of the popular bookmarking site, del.icio.us which was then bought by Yahoo! and subsequently changed to just delicious.com.

Domain Hacks

Originally, domain hacks were simply single words that could be “split” at various breaking points with the final break being between the domain and the domain extension. For example, the domain inter.net is nothing more than the word inter, but because it uses the .net extension, it becomes the word internet.
Examples of domain hacks

Here are some other domain hacks that either were or are popular:

  • Who.is – The term whois is a networking term that describes a service used to display the ownership records of a domain name.
  • Blo.gs – This site was also purchased by Yahoo! and is a blogroll type of service that allows you to keep tabs on all your favorite blogs.
  • Goo.gl – Google’s own URL shortener service. Basically you take a really long URL and shrink it down to something more manageable.
  • E.xplo.it – This domain requires two hacks using a third-level domain (e) to make it spell exploit.
  • Cr.yp.to – Another third-level domain hack spelling the word crypto.
  • i.am – This hack uses two real English words.

More information about domain hacks can be found at WikiPedia.

International Extensions

None of the above domains would be possible without the use of foreign domain extensions. If you weren’t aware of the many types of extensions available, basically each country in the world has its own 2-character extension for domain registration.

These extensions are popular because they are generally made up of letters that are used at the end of many English words. Some of these extensions are also popular because the two letters actually might spell a word itself or be an existing acronym. A few examples of this would be .FM and .AM (can be used for radio broadcasters) or .IT (if used to mean Information Technology).

One of the most popular international TLDs comes from the country of Montenegro; .ME. Because .me can add a personal touch to any domain name, many people are registering these names for blogs, family websites and even businesses. In fact, I own Brandon.me for obvious reasons! Other uses of a .ME domain could be various phrases such as For.me, Help.me, Fix.me, Sell.me and Date.me.

Having a hacked domain like For.me can yield so many other options when you start breaking the domain further up the line. You could create something like: Jobs.for.me, Real.estate.for.me or Entertainment.for.me. The possibilities are only limited to the words contained in the dictionary!

Erio.us

I own the domain erio.us and from that, I was able to make myst.erio.us and s.erio.us. I haven’t decided how I want to use the domain, which is why if you type it in, you’re redirected to this page! I can promise you that one day, I will develop a project around one (or all) of the hacks I can create with this one domain.