Not long ago, we discussed Why StaterTech Exists, and this gave me an idea to discuss with you the path one takes to start a website.
Obviously we had identified what we saw as a need, so we had the basic theme of our site in mind. Now came the arduous task of choosing a domain name.
As one can easily imagine, with as long as the Internet has been around, the majority of the really desirable domain names have been taken. There are lots of other extensions out there besides .com (such as .net, .org, and so on), but .com is the first one every one always thinks of when they hear a domain name said. This should always be your first thought, but sometimes it just isn’t possible to find the one you like, and, whatever you do, never use a hyphen in a name, no one ever remembers it.
The way I always start out when trying to pick a domain name is try to think up words that are relevant to what your site will be about, but not always obvious. I realize this may not be the current trend as Web 2.0 companies seem to use any word that can throw together, but it is always my policy to try to use real words. So we went through many, many word arrangements that related to “a technology site for people who need answers” to come up with “people just starting out in technology”… Starters… Tech… StarterTech. Trust me, that took a couple of weeks.
You might think you can pick any old name, but remember that even more so in a traditional brick & mortar type business, your company name is your total identity on the Internet. It is your brand, your street address, it is your everything, so very few decisions are quite as big as picking that domain name.
There are sites out there that can help you with the naming process by letting you enter just a few words and then it suggests something to you, and also tells you if the domains are taken.
BustAName.com - BustAName allows you to enter every day words and it will try combining them for you into different orders to help you find an available name.
Domize.com - Is probably the fastest of the three in that it does checks as you type each letter of your desired domain, and will also suggest alternative spellings while it is working on this.
Squurl.com - Of our three suggestions, this is probably my least favorite as it is very literal with no suggestions given. It is pretty speedy for checking to see what’s taken, but it doesn’t do much beyond that.
Once you’ve found the domain name you want, you need to register the domain name with with a domain registar, and we will cover that in our next post as it has it’s own set of issues you need to consider.
