I am very feed up; what with domain names reserved by the registrars, names withheld by ICANN or whatever they are called due to possible domain name collisions and domain name campers. I am having problems finding a suitable domain name for my new site.
Even if the registrars and ICANN released the domain names they are holding ( which are popular names they can sell for a larger sum ) I know they would be snapped up by campers.
I had almost settled on a .photo name and then I thought I should then buy the .photos name as well. But then I find a camper already has the .photos name.
These campers amaze me as one name I was looking at had been owned since 1999 and the owner wants nearly £4,000 for it. But I must say he had written a nice bit of text on his holding page unlike most of the other campers. Also there are so many tld’s now there will be less chance of him selling it for thet price.
Anyway my site has been ready to upload for a month and I can still not find a name I like!
You can try using a name generation tool like NameMesh - not only does it suggest names for you, but it also helps you come up with your own. It’s pretty full-featured.
Honestly, I wouldn’t fuss over it (hard, I know). If your site is ready to upload, just upload it somewhere - anywhere - right friggin now. Think about it, you’re holding yourself up over a name. In the meantime you could be building up a readership/userbase which you could just redirect later on.
As an example, one of the more popular CSS sites is css-tricks.com. Another popular web design site is called Codrops which isn’t even hosted on its own domain. It’s a subfolder of a hideous sounding domain - tympanus. Tympanus dude, dot net to boot…if that didn’t slow her down nothing should slow you down.
Yeah, domain names go fast, especially if there’s any indication that someone else might be interested — there’s a huge aftermarket for domain sales, so many people have huge domain portfolios and are hoping to strike it rich with one big sale.
I agree with @labofoz, it’s best to just pick something and get started. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck in indecision paralysis waiting for the perfect domain! SitePoint was started as webmaster-resources.com (way back in 1994, before “all the domain names” were taken!) and it re-branded a few years later. It’s always an option.
Yes, domain camping is a pain (greedy imho, and should be outlawed) but there’s plenty of room for creativity—as there’s an infinite number of possible names, really.
Have you considered other popular extensions like .io etc? Lots of options there, too. You can combine subdomain with tld, too (su.bdomain.com) … so just get creative! We can help with it if you like.
As said above, it’s ultimately the quality of the content that will give the site traction, rather than the domain name.
Thank you for the input; I just wanted to start off with something “right” in the first place.
But as you say it is more the content rather than the name and I could always change the name later. I will have another brainstorming session later.
I am under the impression that the length of time the domain has been registered makes a difference. The difference may be slight but just case it isn’t then I would be tempted to create a sub-domain on your existing site.
Plus it will save the additional cost of the domain and also the hassle of having an extra site to maintain.