Here are my personal priorities and considerations for picking domains:

1. Shortest .com that I can live with while avoiding dashes or special characters. If you’re lucky enough to find your preferred address ending in .com then stop reading this and register it! Now! Even for churches and organizations I recommend at least parking the .com even if you decide to use the .org version.

2. Will I be communicating the domain verbally? If so it needs to be memorable. Also consider the savvy-ness of the audience you’re communicating to. If your audience is relatively new to the web it’s even more important to stick with the familiar dot-com domain. If you run with a tech savvy crowd, then they are most like ready for anything you throw at them.

3. If people will be finding the site using primarily links online from your other profiles (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) then they’re just going to click on it mainly and the length and memorable factor is less important.

4. Will you print it on business cards? If it’s too long it might not fit well. Also three words are more difficult to remember than two. Keep it as short as possible.

5. If it’s a commercial site that you want to make money with then the decision is much more important than if it’s a personal / business card / blog type thing. If somebody wants to really wants to see your site (they know you or want to get to know you) they will spend the time to figure out what it is. If you’re trying to catch the general population of casual surfers you better make it as easy as possible because you only have a couple of seconds (literally) to hold their attention. Commercial sites need relevant, memorable names. Don’t get cute with it.

I know I promised five tips but here’s a bonus. Try NameBoy.com. You’ll know what it does when you get there so no further explanation is necessary. I’ve never registered a domain without running it by NameBoy.

So those are my top five considerations for choosing a domain name. I’ll give some registrar and hosting recommendations in a later post. Hint: Don’t default to Godaddy. There are other alternatives that don’t use questionable advertising practices.

Brett

If you spend any amount of time online and you use a Microsoft Windows based PC you know, or at least I hope you know, that you need to be on your toes to protect the security of your computer and the data stored on it.

I want to share one of my core resources for keeping up with the latest news and information about keeping your Windows PC safe and running its best. That resource is Windows Secrets.

I have subscribed to the Windows Secrets newsletter for several years. Then this past summer I upgraded to their paid version. I read it thoroughly each week. It’s not always a home run for me, but this week was good enough that it prompted me to write about it. Click this link to read this week’s Windows Secrets Newsletter.

If you don’t have time to read it, at least install the NoScript plugin for Firefox (if you don’t use Firefox, you should). NoScript is a defense against “click-jacking” where a bad guy can install something on your computer when you click a seemingly legitimate link on a website. Be aware though that NoScript also blocks friendly scripts, but you can turn those on when you are on a trusted site.

The other good article in this week’s WS (you have to upgrade to the paid version to get it) is an explanation of how Adobe Flash player stores information on your computer similar to browser cookies. Too much to explain here but you really need to read it if you have the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed.

Check out Windows Secrets.

By the way for the record, Microsoft Windows based computers and Apple computers are both PC’s (Personal Computers). They just run different operating systems. Apple PC’s are not totally immune to viruses, etc. The bad guys don’t bother creating viruses for Mac PC’s because there are relatively few of them. For now. Just had to get that out there!

Brett