Tag: domain names

How to Choose the Right Domain Name

First Site Guide runs a good article on how to choose the right domain name.  I mostly agree with it, except for maybe this part:

No numbers or hyphens
Numbers and hyphens (especially hyphens) cause confusion. Stay away from them at all costs. Even something as clever as the number1website.com will cause confusion. Make the name speak for itself.

Especially the part about hyphens.  Ideally, I’d say you should use a single word domain.  But if you do have two or more words, use hyphens.  Hyphens act as separators, much like spaces, and make your domain more readable.  Have a look at these domains and imagine them hyphened – that’d be a totally different story, don’t you think?

Domain name redemption fee

After years and years of working with domain names (buying, selling, configuring, etc), today was the first time that I needed to recover an expired domain name.  I thought I didn’t need it, but I was wrong.  I needed it, I needed to unlock it, and I needed to transfer it to another owner.

Not even seeing the domain in my GoDaddy account sent me directly to the knowledge base search.  Gladly, I wasn’t the only one with this problem, so a helpful article describing how to unlock an expired domain has been created previously.  When I tried the instructions, I found the domain alright, but I wasn’t allowed to unlock it.

Unlock

Assuming that I need to renew the domain for at least a year, I tried that option.  Now came the big surprise – the redemption fee.  Can you guess how much it was?  Here’s a hint:

Redemption fee

64 EUR fee for a 9 EUR domain… WOW!  Given that all these processes are fully automated and don’t really require any manual labor or other extensive resources, I think that’s a bit too expensive.  About 60 EUR too much, I’d say.

Obviously, that’s not an option now.