SurfScranton On The Web: A Catchy Address

SurfScranton
On The Web

Putting It All Together

A Catchy Address

A web address (also known as Universal Resource Locator or URL) is what you type in your browser to display a site. I recommend a real URL, like www.yourname.com. Names that branch off a service provider like www.provider.com/yourname or www.yourname.provider.com just don’t look serious.

The bad news is you have to make up your catchy URL. Some advise descriptive names, like EasternPennsylvaniaSheepSheering while others have had moderate success with fanciful names like E-Bay or Amazon (grin). Amtrak is often cited as the best name ever … a perfect mix of descriptive, easy to remember and a modern high-tech sound. Plan on using ".com" on the end to indicate a commercial site. If you are a bonafide non-profit organization, you can use ".org". As you think up names, visit Register.com to see if they are already taken.

Network Solutions represents an international organization called the InterNIC that registers new URLs and makes sure they are all unique. They charge $35.00 a year and take the first two years up front, so you start off with $70.00 investment in a URL. If somebody wants to charge you a big premium for having yourname.com, keep shopping.

A good hosting service (see next section) will handle the paperwork for the InterNIC for no charge. You can do it yourself at Network Solutions site, but you need some technical information about the servers, so let your hosting provider do it for you.

Make sure you control your URL.

InterNIC should send the bills to YOU and should have YOU as the administrator for the site. If your hosting provider is registered as the administrator, you might have trouble getting control if you want to move to another host. You may have to do a little extra paperwork, but it’s well worth the effort.

MyCompany Dot Com

If you are committing yourself to the web in a big way, should you put "dot com" in your company name? My general advice is "no."

The powers that be introduce new names now and then, like "dot net". You might lock into one and find it looks dated or out of place in a year.
You lock yourself into being an Internet company. Maybe that's a good thing, but maybe another sales channel will show up and you'll be looking dated or out of place again.

<-Design Address Hosting->