Arts Web Project

There are many sources on the web for guidelines on selecting a domain name. Mary Anne and I have some hard and fast rules:

Keep it simple. If possible, choose your name. People may not remember your cleverly chosen business name, but hopefully they will remember your name. If that isn’t possible, add a logical word to the title. For example, Colin Cunningham’s name was taken, so he added “art” to become:

colincunninghamart.com

Pass the “radio” test. If your domain name was used as part of a radio announcement, could it be understood correctly by everyone, without explanation? “Trees for you dot com” could be understood as trees4u.com, treesforyou.com. “Northwind Arts Center” could be understood as northwindartcenter or northwindartscenter, since the “s” and “c” link to form a common sound.

Avoid odd suffixes. The .biz, .us, .info suffixes are not known to many folks. Use .com, or .org for your web name.

Buy your name with no frills. We use GoDaddy.com for all our domain names. There are others that are equally good; we’ve had good luck with GoDaddy. They will try to sell you expensive add-ons that you don’t need. If you are paying more than $10 per domain name, you are buying something you don’t need.

Once you’ve purchased your domain name, you will need to “point” your domain to the location on the web where your account is hosted. Your hosting provider will supply you with two “nameservers” that will identify your account.