Internet Domain Name Registration

This is off-topic but semi-related. I've been trying to make a website that is more inclusive of what I do than just this blog. It’s bad enough already that I've set the Pokerbird up to cover two topics and I don't want to dilute it further with other interests. So, I've spent the last few days laying the foundations for a portal domain, one of whose rooms would be this blog.

First, I needed a name and that took me into the murky world of registrations, bidding and auctions. One obvious target was pokerbird.com, which was for sale on Sedo. You can generally find that out just by typing the URL into a browser. Sedo seemed kosher enough, so I signed up and discovered that the starting price was $100 to transfer the site.

Hmm. Seventy quid, eh? More than I wanted to pay but still not excessive. I bid and less than 24 hours later got a counter-offer from the vendor of £300. So, what was the deal with a starting price? He further said that he had offers over £300. Well, dummy, take them. What's the point of allowing me to undercut them? Two weeks later I notice that the domain is still for sale. Like I said: a murky world.

Just to ring-fence him I registered pokerbird.net, .org and .info for less than £30 at GoDaddy, the world’s biggest domain registrar. In the Web landscape that put me in the suburbs compared with the shiny .com downtown of corporate glass and steel tower blocks. But, hey, the .net neighbourhood in particular is up and coming.

So much for headquartering this blog. I had a bigger problem with my own personal portal. I have a famous name, so andygibb.everything is taken. Even without an illustrious namesake I’m sure few personal domains are untenanted for anybody. Try it for yourself. Actually, the Andy Gibb people had had to settle for .net. I’m sure whoever’s sitting on .com is a relative of my pokerbird.com friend. Anyway, joebloggs.com in general is out.

Except that for days the answer was staring me in the face at GoDaddy before I twigged. They love to sell domains, so much that they present a list of choices close to what you have requested. These include .net, .org, et al, suffixed domains like andygibbstore and prefixes like my, new and the.

The – theandygibb.com. Aren’t I the Andy Gibb? Not just any old Andy Gibb, not even that one. The one.

I snapped it up. Job done. Well, not quite. Now I have to create the website and that's a whole other story.