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Do you have or know of fun domain names? Do you think it's worth having them?
I'm interested in domain names that are remarkable in the sense that they are short or easy-to-remember.
This idea for a topic started because I find myself window shopping for domain names. Thing is, the only use I have for a domain is for my personal website. That's why I hesitate picking up these fun quirky domains.
What are some interesting domain names you've encountered?
Do you think it's worth it (in terms of utility and/or entertainment value) to have a more remarkable domain name for a personal website?
I randomly thought the other day, does Subaru have a Russian site, and is it suba.ru ? Of course it is.
https://suba.ru
A friend of mine ended up with zedoe.com because she bought it over the phone and spelled it out to the person at the registrar as zed-oh-ee dot com. Her name is Zoe, but is Canadian. Anyhow, she kept it for several years but then gave it up.
One of my friends buys silly domains when they get bored - my favorite of which is definitely http://www.wakemeupwakemeupinsideicantwakeupwakemeupinsidesave.me
EDIT: Aw, they may have let it lapse. It used to just be a redirect to the music video on YouTube.
DOUBLE EDIT: They didn't set up https - link now works!
It looks like it still works sort of? U can't use https and it takes u to a scene from the daredevil movie that has the song playing in the background!
After me eyeing it for a few years, Tanzania finally changed their laws which allowed me to pick up https://bo0.tz, which I'm very happy about :D
Idk why but that looks like something I'd find in a phishing email
Sure! Personally I love playing with TLDs. My personal domain name is leclan.ch, a play on my last name. Some people don't get it and think I'm from Switzerland, and to those people I say, read the website /shrug
Not sure why exactly you're hesitating?
Mine is also a play on my name, emilybau.com
I simultaneously felt so clever for seeing the opportunity and at the same time felt it might be a mistake, but seeing that you have also done it reinforces my confidence to keep it.
I’ve seen the same thing, except this person went a step further and their URL is their last name (but split up with the TLD), which they also use as an email server, so it’s basically Firstname@Lastn.ame — and now I’m sad that there are no TLDs that I can use to split my own last name in the same way
That’s all fun and games until you have to spell it out to some 60 year old non-tech person over the phone for the first time…
Yeah, my employer’s domain used to be the full company name, which you would think wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it was painful overhearing my coworkers having to spell it out to clients. We finally bought a much shorter domain and all concerned are much happier.
I love a good novetly/fun domain name. I'm still most proud of finding tild.es was available for registration and use by Tildes. But my other favorites from when the site name was still being brainstormed were:
spektr.im, spectr.im, subm.it, submiss.io, subm.is, submi.us, coremun.it, commun.io, communi.co, contri.bt, contribut.io, namaha.ge, zignal.to, tapest.re, tild.ee, recipro.city
Some of which may even still be available if anyone fancies them. :P
I have https://nore.gg - which is like “gg no re”, a sassy thing to say after beating someone in a video game.
I've definitely been reading that as "nor egg" this whole time ngl lol
I’ve found many great domains using https://domai.nr, which sort of explains what it does through its own name: search for any name you want and it will search through all available tlds for the most optimal name for you.
You want to start an autofast business but autofast.com is taken? Well, but autofa.st is available.
Amaretto business? Well amaretto.com is taken, but amaret.to is free. Etc.
tld-list.com is also good
I don’t know how it is from desktop, but I think the experience on mobile was quite horrible and it doesn’t provide the same functionality as domainr at all?
mobile sucks for... everything. The desktop has a filter on the side where you enter the name you want or the tld you're after. You can also filter down by the type of TLD. Its worth trying with a real browser.
Hah, if a site don’t work on mobile then it gets no love from me - I probably browse the web 90% on mobile.
Mobile isn’t bad, only websites are bad in my opinion.
It’s surprising how terrible the mobile versions of most websites are, even at this late date. The vast majority of users browse the web through mobile devices, but for most companies the mobile version of their site is an afterthought, if they think about it at all.
I spent quite a bit of money (given I'm an individual person) on https://river.me for my personal website. I would 100% do it again, there's no question about spelling, and even if it's not
.com,.meis still pretty common for personal websites. I could've done river.dev without any upfront cost, just yearly registration, but that TLD isn't common enough imo.If you can do a very short & easy-to-remember
.medomain vs a much longer.comone, go for the.me. You want something that you can just tell someone verbally, without spelling it, and they know where to go.For a personal or project m website, I agree. For anything commercial, I highly recommend to go for a .com or local TLD such as .fr, .it or .de, depending on where your business is located.
We used an uncommon TDL like .eco for a former business, and it caused lots of confusion, including customer inquiries frequently being sent to a .com website using the same name.
I suppose, the same goes for localized TLDs like .fr though. If it's about business, .com is the least confusing, if the domain is still available.
A lot of people just can’t wrap their head around the fact that websites don’t have to end in “.com”. Those people also tend to struggle with domains that have hyphens in them.
I think that might matter based on location. Like I would prefer to go to a .ca than a .com, because then there's a higher chance it's a Canadian company.
You can alias several domains to the same same site or email server tonget the best of both worlds. At my last startup gig, we had long-company-name.com, but we got tired of typing it in on people's Envoy tablets when visiting customers, so we got the initials as shorter domain, think "lcn.ai".
Interestingly, the short form ended up supplanting the long one in all our communication.
A partner organisation recently did somthing similar where they changed their mailadres domain/suffix but they hadn't gotten around to creating a website for the new domain / having it redirect to the website. It caused a lot of confusion
Yeah, you definitely have to cross your I's and dot you T's and do lots of testing.
What tool are you using to generate the numbered white arrows in your screenshots?
ShareX!! It's an amazing screencapping utility, the numbered white arrows are via the
Ihotkey when u are in selection mode (not sure whyI, maybe increment?) It's a little bit of a learning curve to configure, but if you're on Windows I can't recommend it enough!How did you do this? My name’s .com is taken and owned by a company, but is not in (public) use.
We used sedo.com, which afaict is the standard way to do transfers like this (legitimately). But the domain was already listed for sale on Namecheap, so I'm not sure how it would happen if you don't already have a listing you can purchase from.
If you do try to buy the domain, negotiate the asking price - it's likely they'll go down at least a bit since nearly any sale is profit, and it's worth nothing to them unless it sells.
My long time nickname is "goose", given to me by an old boss back in 2007. It caught on quickly and my friends started using it too, so I leaned into it.
A few years ago I got goose.ws and I've been happy with it. I wanted a short domain, and there were only a few two letters TLD's where "goose" was available.
I would love to trade it out for goo.se but that'll never happen, someone else already has it, and domains that short are a rare commodity.
Well, now you know how I ended up there. ;)
Heh, throwback for me, forgot I put that at the base domain. Almost all of my projects are at subdomains. Thanks for stopping by though!
Yay, I finally found* another one!! .ws users unite!
(Can’t name mine, though, as it’s my last name and I use it for email too)
I got to it as I wanted a concise domain for my own that was still somewhat “serious” for IRL use, and a company of my last name took most of the major TLDs already (the company is unrelated – literally)
*I have encountered a .ws domain in use in the wild before, exactly once, but it is certainly not for a personal website: sudo.ws (and yes, this is the official site of the sudo utility by the sudo developer)
Nice! Who do you use for registrar? I just swapped to DirectNIC after my old one turned their prices way up. They're fine, don't love them, don't hate them. Always looking for better options, though.
Not OP, but I use NameSilo for my .ws domain. Also, you can compare registrar prices at tldes.com/ws
I’ll preface this by saying I’m only running email, no website(s) yet, and email is one of those “mission critical” things I wouldn’t ever trust myself to self-host (or put the necessary time into).
I initially registered the domain with GoDaddy (most probably due to them having good SEO at the time) for a while, before setting up the various emails in use now, and have since moved to IONOS as they are from my home country and have been a proven email hoster for my dad ever since I was a kid.
I don’t know if this’ll change when I get around to creating my own homepage, but that is where I currently stand.
And I’m pretty clueless on the whole topic, so please chime in if anyone has a better EU based solution/suggestion!
I have a 4 letter first name, and was able to grab name.site and name.space which I'm pretty happy about. I use an additional subdomain on one of those for my internal/local network, and I can do so without fear that someone will snipe the domain or something.
My friend owned iowe<friend’s name>.com for a while, and hosted a static page on it with links to his venmo, zelle etc accounts. He would sometimes send a link to it when someone asked how to pay him back for something. It was a fun little gag.
I use devon.lol as my personal domain. It's fun, but I get a lot of questions and sideways looks when I tell people my email address.
Could have gone with devon.dot@devon.at
😆 This reminds me of McSweeney’s cursed email addresses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLE7zsJk4AI c.f.
Took me 5 reads to get this one.
Reminds me of this wi-fi password.
I was going redirect mail from a custom domain just to mess with stores that always ask for an email.
At the end of the day I'm not that imaginative and its some effort + money for a cheesy gag.
Pretty much any time I see a clever or silly url, I think of Dillon/Edwards Investments
Very disappointing that ICANN has not opened up the .fart tld.
I briefly owned thwack.me (also: please.dont.thwack.me etc.) and whack.us. Then lost interest and let them expire.
Last I checked, they were free and available—but I just checked again, and they've both been squatted. Ugh. Guess I should have held onto them...
Nah, no loss.
I can't really stand domain squatters. No one's ever going to buy their domain, unless it's a proper word and .com tld. Such as something like "chocolate.com" In all other cases, people just move on and pick any other still free domain. They usually come up with something.
Since you weren't going to really do anything with the domains, you didn't lose anything. :)
I have a domain pavoukovo.cz, which means "Pavouk's" - like it's mine.
I like the idea of using things like sklad.pavoukovo.cz (Pavouk's storage) or jellyfin.pavoukovo.cz (Pavouk's Jellyfin) or tv.pavoukovo.cz (Pavouk's TV).
It translates to email'
s as well, even though I don't use them on the domain. But I can see emails like manzelka@pavoukovo.cz (Pavouk's wife) etc.
So the domain is not smetging extravagant or fun, but it can be made funny by these little details.
pavoukovo.cz leads nowhere at the moment. Not only the webserver doesn't work, but I don't have public IP on hand at the moment... Working on it, though. And yes, I self-host.
Inspired by del.icio.us and older domain hacks, I got lobi.to (spanish: tiny wolf) as my personal domain a few years ago
Perks:
Cons:
I own umar.au which is really just a vanity domain useful only for email since sticking my blog on there would negatively affect my SEO (ccTLDs are known to rank higher within their respective countries but lower everywhere else). Nevertheless, it’s fun to own and if you have the money for it and you think it’s something you’d enjoy owning, then go for it!
I don’t know about SEO, but would it also hurt to have that just redirect to your blog?
No it wouldn’t. I haven’t gotten around to doing that but it’s a good idea.
The best I’ve ever found and considered paying the premium for was
i-f.art.I also own my last name under
.com,.org, and.netTLDs.Not gonna lie, I'm seriously considering this.
You could probably get a decent payout from a seedy* OnlyFans table-sitter type.
*possibly a very poor choice of diction
My sincerest apologies for subjecting you (and everyone else who reads this) to this horribly offensive thought.
my personal site follows the format firstnamelastna.me, just using the .sh TLD. Fun to use in emails, but many sites don’t accept .sh TLDs because of bad validation logic or don’t allow me@ for similar reasons, so it’s nice to have a more “normal” one that uses .net as well.
The most important reason for setting up your own domain name is never having to change your email address again, while also not being beholden to a service like gmail or yahoo (yeah, I'm old). I can move my email from one provider to another as service quality changes without any visible change to anyone else.
I like having total control over the domain. I'll have to do a post on how I manage email signups with with a subdomain like spam.mydomain.com.
I was looking for a neutral, nerdy domain to use for business email and picked up 314pies.net. Later I was able to get 314pies.com at auction for almost nothing. I like having it for business dealings.
I also have several domains related to my name, my wife's name, and our family names for personal email.
When my daughter was born, I registered <firstname>.me and <firstnameMiddlename>.com for her future use. By the time she is grown, women may not change their last names anymore when they get married, but both of those options will continue to be useful if she does.
A good, unlikely to be taken family email domain is "SurnamesRUs.com" like the now defunct Toys'R'Us store name. Then you can do an address for everyone in the family.
I own porkchop.express. Yessir, the check is in the mail.
I love fun domains. I bougth GnocchiDokie.com and GnocchiDocchi.com and held onto them for a few years. Ah Covid, the land of unfulfilled Gnocchi dreams.
I get that this is a small cozy part of the web, but aren't people afraid of doxing themselves? There's a lot of personal info on here!
I associate most of my forum usernames with my real identity, like on hn, reddit, and tildes. I use an alt account for sensitive uses. I assume most people do the same?
You're probably right. I deleted my post since in the cold light of day it's probably best not to link the various domains together let alone to a username.
I'll leave filedump.net and thiscomputer.info behind though, since they are already linked to my username.
filedump broke a while ago in terms of uploads, but I've left it online since there's literally decade (almost decades!) old uploads there that are still linked on forum posts and I'd hate to see those forum posts become useless because all the pictures it's referencing have gone.
Now that’s a neat idea, and even cooler that it's still around and functional!
I have both my surname and my partner's surname at
.cc, which is close enough to.comso people understand it. I don't know if.cchas flown under the radar in regards to registrations, but I just checked a handful of my friends' surnames and they were all available. Also super helpful that Cloudflare can now register.ccdomains. So if you're looking for a domain that's just your surname, maybe you'll get lucky with.cc!I have policeradiochatter.com but have never found a use for it
I wonder if AI-generated audio is fast enough and sound good enough to just have it run an always-streaming audio that sounds like indistinguishable radio chatter? It’s not much but it sounds fun, and given I still occasionally go to hackertyper for goofy stuff, I could totally see myself occasionally heading to policeradiochatter for all my generic radio chatter sound needs :P
I considered getting sparks.bet once I realized that .bet was a thing, but unfortunately it's taken and I'm not really in the mood to use a top-level domain dedicated to gambling sotes for something personal anyway.
I wanted to get barf.ly as a joke site, and put something up demonstrating the emetic dangers of hanging out in a bar too much, but some clothing brand already got to it.
I love domain hacks. I have a few domains like tild.es that I use for small projects.
In addition to those, I also have firstname.la (stname) (e.g., Jane Doe = jane.do) as one of my personal domain. My email follows the pattern firstn@me.la (stname) (e.g., Jane Doe = j@ne.do).
I'm proud to own https://nmn.gl/, which is basically my name and surname with all the vowel (and the letter "y") removed. I love the fact that I have a domain that's just 5 characters.
And unlike most domain hacks, the main domain name and TLD are even separated in semantic meaning. It’s kinda crazy that worked out!
Yes I feel quite lucky :') i realised the potential after seeing
goo.glfor the nth time and going "wait a minute..."A friend of mine has an "a" in their name. Let's say their name is David. They registered a domain just so their email address could be d@vid.org (but for their actual name).
I own https://fuckingslave.club because I keep forgetting to turn off auto-renew for it
Owned one for a while to use as the website for our wedding RSVP.
Currently looking into the requirements of a .cat domain to use as our personal email domain and tribute to our pets that have crossed the rainbow bridge.
I have https://jaoh.xyz