Registering your own domain name makes sense — it gives you a personal and unique email address and a base for any business activity you might experiment with. But have you bothered?
HTTP picture from Shutterstock
A survey conducted by AUDA and AusRegistry of 10,000 Australians found that 24 per cent owned a domain name. Of those, 74 per cent had a .au domain name, even though pricing for other top-level domains (such as .com or .info) is often much cheaper.
I suspect the figure might be a little higher among Lifehacker readers. So I’m wondering:
Tell us more (if you wish) about your domain name addiction or disdain in the comments.
Comments
21 responses to “Do You Own A Domain Name?”
Yep, I have several. Two for myself, about a dozen for clients, about 3 for my wife.
I have http://davidgrayphotography.com.au (don’t forget to click on Gallery!), http://solidinc.org (my first ever domain — had it since about 2006 or so? The first simply redirects to the second). My wife has one for her book (http:/amethysteyesthebook.com, goes to her deviantART because we haven’t had time to set up a site yet), one for her art, and I think one as a personal site (which just goes back to the one for her art).
At $10 USD a piece for a year (it’s gone up $2 since I last renewed), it’s easy enough to just buy a few and have them for anything from Minecraft servers, to a redirect to an existing site..
Yes I have a few fore my business, covering the bases across .com .com.au .net and some other domains that I might want to hold.
What I find strange is that people will register a domain and have a website to promote their business, and then use a bigpond email address (or hotmail/gmail etc). To me that looks unprofessional, I know it might be easier, but gmail and outlook.com can handle custom domains, and plenty of other hosting services can provide it as well. Why only do half the job, says to me that you might not be have the attention detail or skills to do the job for me.
Or they do have the skills for the job and are shrewd?
I have a .com that redirects to GMail for myself. I have then set up GMail to show the sent address as my .com address, and I have set up GMail to use my ISP’s SMTP server, so that it doesn’t display the “sent on behalf of GMail” message. The recipient has no idea it’s not coming from the .com address mail servers.
Gives me the best of both worlds – an official looking email address/system, and a realllllly good email app on my Android.
EDIT: I misread your comment. Thought you were complaining about people redirecting to other emails, but you were complaining about people who don’t use their domain as their email address.
I also own several.
One for my e-mail, which I’ve had since my last free e-mail provider went down about 13 years ago.
One for my personal blog, etc, which basically never gets updated.
A few for clubs/groups I am affiliated with.
A couple for clubs/groups I have tried to get off the ground, but haven’t gotten there yet.
I have been registering .com for many years now. Years ago it was an addiction to come up with interesting .com addresses and register them, also managed to sell a few at premium prices. Now it seems everythingstaken.com
I have two: “corporate” and rental property (both are moribund at the moment, so I’ll not reveal them). Also, I have a .name domain for a personal e-mail address.
Should there not be a ‘No, but I am thinking about/would like to get one’ option? Because that is where I fit it in.
why not at $10 a year why not.
I just have the one domain, and then I have my DNS hosted at ZoneEdit to allow me the best flexibility.
I have (unfortunately) got a dynamic IP, and ZoneEdit allows dyndns. This is my link to my Plex/Web server, my uTorrent WebUI, my games servers I run from time to time when I want a round with friends (Killing Floor, L4D2, Terraria) etc.
I then have subdomains pointed to various places: I have a subdomain for a web portal I have built for my work, and a subdomain pointing to a friends static IP, and a subdomain pointing to my work social club modem.
All my sites are hosted on my home server, and Apache simply redirects using VirtualHosts. My work has only 100 users, so it doesn’t warrant dedicated hosting.
I initially read that as you hosting work websites out of your home (bad idea), but then realised you probably just meant you’re hosting them at your work rather than pay for dedicated hosting (good idea) But since I’ve bothered to write this much, I might as well hit submit
For anybody considering hosting work stuff from home: avoid it.
Worst case scenario: you breach all kinds of policies about data security/disaster recovery/transition plans, and find yourself in legal hot water when something inevitably goes wrong.
Best case scenario: everybody at work is sucking up bandwidth you could be using for, uh, ‘downloading linux iso’s’
I’ve been meaning to, ever since I set my friend up with one for her photography which I help maintain with her.
Been thinking about moving my standard wordpress blog (mostly music review stuff) to it’s own site with a portfolio for my work (film, photoshop, photography, web & whatever else I actually do..) i’ve just been too lazy, to be honest.
I own two, one for an email (just MyName.com) and I bought one a week ago to tryout a new tech website (just basic tech tips) and I’m hoping to compliment the articles with YouTube tutorials… its just a basic wordpress at the moment.
If you’re interested, take a look? http://pctrickery.com/had a few of my name whilst doing photography, but kept em all – one business name, and several name pages incluing the awesome jainash.com
I have a few. I use one for my home server (NAS, Plex, VPN, VNC) and another for my design portfolio/blog.
For myself I currently have:
http://www.kissmycreative.com
http://www.kissmycreative.com.au
http://www.phalacee.com
http://www.jasonfowler.net
http://www.sixthdaydesign.com
For my wife, I manage http://www.wacareerassistance.com.au
Then I host and manage about 14 additional sites for clients.
http://www.seanellery.com
Personal and freelance artist website (hire me!)
Plus, just to make everyone jealous. I have it hosted on a friends secure data server in the Netherlands. (I’m in Australia and I’m not Dutch myself… We know each other through a mutual Star Trek fan forum – so yep guys, being a nerd pays off sometimes!)
I have unlimited upload/download, as much space as I want, and no traffic restrictions, plus an unlimited email account… All for free! I’m in my 13th year of this situation now.
However I do make a voluntary financial contribution just to show my appreciation. Every time my google Adsense reaches a payout threshold I send it off to him. This averages every 18 months or so.
Cheers
Sean
You’ve got some great art, but man that site looks like it’s out of the nineties.
Yep! Made it in 1999 to be precise. Last major format/appearance update about 2003 I think…!
But it works, and I can follow and write the basic HTML code to change stuff, so I’m fine with it…
I’ve got about 12-15 at the moment myself and have registered about a dozen over the years for FFR for their email domains.
Most I buy are when I think of a “cool” domain name and then go and register it (if available)… and then end up doing nothing with them… but I’m always GONNA… oh yeah… lots of ideas… then renewal comes up and I think… you know what.. let’s renew it, and then THIS TIME I’ll do something with it. Of course never happens. Yes I may have a problem 🙂
My current fave that I have is wretchedhiveofscumandvillany.net (which has nothing there… of course)
Thanks for getting me off my butt – just ordered one!
I was wondering how many comments would just be “I’ve got one, here it is, give me work / publicity pls”.
I have 5 personal / pet projects, 2 work and 15+ client domains registered.