♫ "Oh, Give me a domain..."

There are three ways I go to a webpage.  Either I have the page bookmarked, it is a link found on another page or I do a Yahoo Search.  I NEVER type in the URL in the address bar.  I think I'm afraid I might add or forget a letter and wind up on some German porn site by accident (and end up in some deep Scheiße). For example, if I wanted to go to the Aurora Players website (which is bookmarked already), I would type it into the search engine, then click on the correct link after reading the various descriptions to make sure it's safe.

But the domain names are important.  They represent who you are.  So you need a strong name.  Of course, the shorter the better (in case people do type it in).  The official site for Barnes & Noble is:

www.barnesandnoble.com

but you can also get there by typing:

www.bn.com

There is a video site called hulu.com.  Officially, the name comes from two Mandarin Chinese words, one meaning a bottle gourd that, traditionally, was hollowed out to become a "holder of precious things," and the  other meaning is a more modern "interactive recording."  Of course, the fact that "hulu" is only four letters doesn't hurt, either.  For the record, "culu.com," "dulu.com," "fulu.com," "gulu.com" and "julu.com" are already registed domains.

Which brings me to today's fun topic: finding available domain names.  Now, the short three, four and five-word URL's that are easy to remember are all taken and either in use or "squatted" by people looking to sell them for quite the profit.  But if most people are like me and get to sites through links, any clever name works.

Let's look at business sites.  You want to make your site sound legitimate but you just want to use it as a way to inflate your ego.  Grab three words that go well together and you got it made.  The domain:

nationalbusinesstoday.com

is available.  Imagine what you could do with a site like that!




How about entertainment?  You can creatively have a music, television or movie site by grabbing a few words and making a catchy title.  The domain:

onstageweekly.com

is also available for purchase.



Did you notice I used the bottoms of the "O" and "S" to make the tops of the theater masks inside the "W" - cute, huh?  And did you notice that, in both headlines, I am working with somebody.  Geez, even in my wild, delusional fantasies I'm still dependent.  To make it sound fresh and timely, add a "daily" or "weekly" to the domain, even if you don't touch it for a month.  Or, if you spend a lot of time online in your boxers drinking coffee (AM) or beer (PM) you can put regular updates on the site.

Let's look at this blog.  What if I wanted to do a stand-alone site for my ramblings?  Good news!

noonethinkslikeido.com

is available.  But it looks like someone dropped a Scrabble game on the floor.  The last few letters of the domain look Japanese, too.  But what if I did the acronym?  N-O-T-L-I-D.  Hey, it's kind of clever in that it makes another concept.  I can use that throughout to site by having graphics of a jar without its lid.  I even came up with a logo.



Awesome.  There's only one problem.  NOTLID.COM is taken.  How?  It doesn't mean anything.  So I went to the website and it said "This domain name has just been registered."  Below that is a link saying "Why is this being displayed?"  When I clicked on it, it took me to a German page from a domain and website building company 1and1.  Someone in Germany is squatting on my site!  And they'll probably sell it to me for a lot of euros or marks or krauts or whatever they use there for currency.

And that is Scheiße.  I mean, real Scheiße eines Bullen

.