Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internet and domain

What's the story behind those filler pages you see when you look at unused domain names?

jeisme — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:29:33 -0800

What's the story behind those filler pages you see when you look at unused domain names? I always enjoy looking at the faux-websites that pop up when you type in a domain name that is apparently owned but not actively used ( see, for example, www.ipotty.com or http://www.poppoppop.com) .
Their combinations of computer-generated text and stock photography are often laughably bad, and I can't imagine ever actually confusing one for a real site. What's the story behind these? I'd guess they're put up by domain name squatters to generate profit from unused sites, but I can't seem to find out anything else about them. Who makes them? Are people actually making money off of them? Why are there so many different designs and formats for them?

help me create a portfolio website that doesn't scream "student work"!

MagicalHypotenuse — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:20:31 -0800

I'm an independent graphic artist looking to create a simple but not amatuerish-looking portfolio website to showcase my work. And because of my limited budget, I pretty much have to do it myself. However, I'm having trouble getting started because there's so much information out there, a lot of it conflicting, out-of-date, too specific, or too general. Please help me do this right! Plenty Basically, what I want is a simple main page leading to a few different galleries of my work, a blog, and a contact page. Nothing outrageously fancy; just crisp, professional, and clean. (Flash is not for me.) Anyway, at this point I can't really afford something like liveBooks so I have to do it myself. I've done a very basic portfolio website for a class, so I'm not entirely clueless, but I'm definitely hoping for something more polished than my student work.

Obviously, there's a lot of information out there (and i n h e r e), but I'm finding myself confused and hung up on all the particulars.

Examples of the kind of stuff that makes me nervous: domain registration, how hosting works, making sure a site is visible in different browsers and on different screen sizes, structuring a website, updating, adding site navigation & text to Photoshop-created galleries, making sure my site doesn't get hacked, etc.

I know this is a vast subject and I'm not expecting anyone to spell out every little detail here on MeFi. What I'm hoping is that some kind and clever people can point me in the right direction, perhaps by recommending specific books or detailed online tutorials that deal with creating online portfolios that are a) readily intelligible by (relative) web design newbies; b) current; c) not tacky or gimmicky. Any other resources or general words of advice would be helpful.

Thanks!

How do I figure out how many visits my website gets?

helios410 — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:50:06 -0800

How do I figure out how many visits my website gets? My domain is registered with 1 and 1 Web Hosting, and I have the beginner package.

Should I renew my TLD?

quidividi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:41:01 -0800

Internet Domain Filter: In 2000, I started a company (Company A) and registered a matching top-level domain. In 2005, I converted Company A into a holding company, and started a second company, which is now the operating vehicle for our consulting business. The domain registration for Company A will soon expire. Is there any point maintaining the registration? The domain name won't have a high resale value and I'm not planning on resurrecting Company A as a public business. Is there anything I'm missing?

Looking for web host that's hospitable.

aristan — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:18:10 -0800

I need an inexpensive ($20 or less a month) webhost that allows multiple domains and Movable Type installations and can handle OK & occasionally large traffic... I've gotten dugg 3 times! Any suggestions? I've had the same host for all my domains for several years now. I picked them because at the time they were cheap and offered better service than my previous host. But sadly, the service has gone down hill.

They revamped their help system about 2 years ago and I have never been able to log in. So, when I need help with anything, I have to submit thru their contact form and it gets flagged as "low priority". They've never been able to explain why it doesn't work nor have they ever bothered to fix it.

I had the previous experience where I found that my site and several others stored on the same server had been hacked and basically I had to repair it myself. No idea how long that had gone on. And now, I tried to log into movable type on a few of my domains and none of the installations work. I get 500 error codes for most of them, but on my main domain, I get "scgiwrap: Caller must be the nobody user" and I have no freaking clue what that means.

So, I'm finally tired of it all and I want a new webhost... but since it's been roughly 6 years since I've shopped for one... I don't know what is a good price or what I should be looking for... anyone want to help me out?

Here's what I want:

- Inexpensive, I currently pay $20 a month & want to keep there or lower
- Multiple Domains, I currently own 8 domains and host via a reseller account. I'd like to either get a reseller account (in case I want to rent out some hosting, as I have done before) or host all of them from one account (making it easier on my nerves!).
- The ability to install Movable Type, I currently host several blogs and have another one in the works. I enjoy movable type and would like to continue to use it. So I'll need to be able to install it... and have it work at least every once and awhile.
- The ability to install Vanilla. I use Vanilla for a forum site (ok... it's a WoW guild. I'm a nerd.)
- The ability to survive a Digg, a BoingBoing and a Mefi-ing all in one day. I have been dugg 3 times, boingboinged a couple, got a mention in the Advocate (from Elijah Wood no less) and one of these days I dream of getting a mention in the Blue... I can dream, can't I? I need a webhost who can survive it.
- Features at least similar to what I currently have: 2.5GB of storage, 45GB of monthly transfer, unlimited emails & ftp accounts, MySQL, PHP, etc etc. I'm looking for close, but I can survive with a bit less if need be.

Help me become a web savvy mogul superstar! (on a budget) :)

miss lynnster — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:49:00 -0800

I'm about to start some new business ventures and my current web host has not been doing a very good job so I want to switch while things are still small. Helllp! By this time next year I plan to have four business websites up and running. (Right now I have one site and two domain names, so I'm planning on doing a lot of work this year.) Recommendations on how to keep this virtual growth as painless, smart and profitable as possible so that I can focus on the work itself, not on damage control with my host. (I've spent three hours on the phone with them this week alone because I haven't been getting my e-mail. They're just awful.)

Here are the sites I plan to set up:
1) I own the domain. My current design site features my resume, portfolio, and room to ftp client files. In the future I'd like to develop that ftp area to be a separate password-protected client area.
2) I own the domain. I need to redesign my old jazz vocalist website and launch that within the next two months. (I don't want MySpace to be where my main web presence is, so please don't suggest that. I need my own domain with MySpace as a minor supplement that points to it.) Although I don't plan for mine to be so Flash-heavy, the content of this site will be similar to this, and should eventually include an area to purchase CDs.
3) Domain needs registering. A new business site set to launch within 3 months, probably no more than ten main pages with one form questionaire page. There might be a variety of photo galleries added over time.
4) Domain needs registering. Probably utilizing a blog template, this site is an online community startup to launch in a year or so, the timing to be dependent upon how the new business progresses (they're tied together). This could end up being a huge and very successful project down the road with a great deal of income potential, but only time will tell. For at least four months, this domain will be a blank canvas waiting for paint while other things get accomplished first.

So here are my questions:
A) What host would you recommend for hosting these four sites (with room to grow)? I want to be sure that the prices are reasonable and don't become cost prohibitive as my businesses grows and traffic increases. I've heard dreamhost is good but when I tried to contact their customer service for an estimate they didn't e-mail me back. I figured that was a bad sign so I gave up on them.
B) My previous domains were registered with Network Solutions. I know I probably don't want to register the new names with them. Should I go through the new host or how do you recommend I register the names? (I already know what they're going to be so I need to snatch them up asap while they're still available.)

Okay... advise away!!!! Thank you in advance for your help. :)

Listing .org domains

chexov — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:37:25 -0800

Is there a way to find organisations that have registered an .org domain within certain geographical boundary (country, region, town)?

HELP!! Need to find a website.

ss448 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:56:34 -0800

HELP ME FIND A WEBSITE??!?! I know his name, how can i find out what domains are registered to his name. So i know PERSON X owns an internet company, but I have no idea what the web address is. How can I find out what domains are registered to his name?

How to get a .tv domain?

clockworkjoe — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:22:42 -0800

What's the best way to get a .tv domain without paying too much? I already have a hosting account on bluehost.com so I want register the domain and then transfer it to bluehost. Which registrar should I use? Sites like channelme don't spell out their deals so I don't want to fall victim to a bad deal. I thought perhaps some of the veteran web gurus here might know the best way to secure a .tv domain.

Registrar w/ bulletproof mail redirect?

skywhite — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 06:18:24 -0800

Registrar w/ bulletproof mail redirect? For several years I have been content with service on my dozen domain registrations with my old registrar, but no longer. I recently registered a .com domain and created one email redirect and one webmail account but neither work. I had to hunt on the registrar's site for the contact-form and never received an automated email with a ticket number. (UPDATE: finally got an automated email this very minute.)

I'm looking for a registrar which offers superlative mail forwarding. I don't really need webmail or hosting or spam protection -- just rock solid redirect from a registrar who isn't going away and has a good reputation. I'm currently paying US $15/year per domain (a mix of European and American domains) -- offering 5 webmail accounts and 1,000 redirects per domain, and I would be willing to continue to pay in that range.

How can I contact an anonymous domain name holder?

frieze — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:24:00 -0800

So I'm starting a business and someone has registered the domain name that would go perfectly with it, and then done nothing. It still has the register.com "Clevername.com is coming soon to Register.com" page at the domain even though it has been registered for several months now. Now here's the tricky part: They use register.com's private domain feature which means that all the whois information goes to domain discreet, a company which shortstops all your whois information for clients. I know from personal experience that unless you call and check with them that your anonymized email address is working correctly there is a good chance that domain discreet is forwarding all queries sent to you straight to the circular file. So, how do I get in touch with the actual Registrant?

Now I know from reading the requests of sketchy people in the past that this might make me sound like a creepy stalker or particularly tenacious spammer, but I don't actually want to know who the registrant is, just get a message to them with some confidence that they will actually receive it. Anyone have any clever ideas? Google searches semantically coupled to the domain name to somehow reverse engineer out who the registrant's identity are not viable (I've tried them).

Buying a .org but not the .com

Plutor — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:50:01 -0800

It is a commonly held belief that enough Internet users foolishly expect every Internet domain to end in ".com", it would be a mistake to purchase and promote a domain ending in ".org" unless one can also purchase the corresponding domain in the ".com" TLD to redirect these foolish Internet users to the proper URL. Is there any statistical evidence that there are so many foolish Internet users out that that this is a necessary practice? Or is this merely unsubstantiated myth?

How much would YOU pay for Microsuck.com?

CommonSense — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:11:22 -0800

I'm thinking of putting my once-great anti-Microsoft advocacy website up for sale. But should I even bother? I have the dubious distinction of being the guy behind Microsuck.com, a website I started in 1999 without any real aim or ambition. For a while, I kind of maintained it, off and on. The last time I really gave it any attention was over two years ago, though.

What keeps it alive is the forums, though -- to this day, it still has an active user base, despite the fact that the long-running joke is that the administrator (me) is essentially an absentee landlord. A few other forum moderators keep an eye on things and "hire/fire" other moderators as needed. Otherwise, weeks will go by without me even THINKING about the site.

There's also some value in the fact that a slew of other domain names all point to the site -- fuckmicrosoft.com, fuckwindows.com, and about 15-20 more of roughly equivalent "value."

I feel like it may be time to let it go. It was vaguely interesting years ago, but it grew into an annoying albatross. I get SO much spam (several messages every time my e-mail client checks -- and that's every FIVE minutes) that what little real feedback comes in has maybe a 5% chance of being read (or even noticed) by me. And what I do get, I don't even answer.

There has been some media coverage of the site before -- mainly online, but by household-name media, and I was once interviewed on Pacifica's Free Speech Radio News show. A few years ago, the website could probably be fairly described as being somewhat well known among geeks. All that is gone now. (Of course, the fact that hating Microsoft ceased to be a "geeky" thing years ago and is now as mainstream as Britney Spears has a lot to do with it, I guess.)

In this phase where I'm trying to "de-clutter" my life, parting with this site would be a great idea. But I also have a not-inconsiderable amount of debt, and selling it for a decent sum would be a a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

I've never bought or sold a website before, and I've only bought virgin domain names from GoDaddy, etc. So I have no clue about what kind of money is involved here. But it seems to me that I can get a reasonably healthy sum if I play my cards right. I'd sell the site -- both the main site and the forums, and all associated domain names -- but ideally, I'd like to see something in the five-digit range. Am I nuts?

Buy a $1888 domain?

DJWeezy — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:44:03 -0800

$1888 for a domain more soon So i want to buy a domain, lets call it mylastname.com I went to look at it and it is owned by one of those companies that just buys domains and then resells them. The company is buydomains.com They then quoted me $1888 to purchase it. I live in a million person plus city and I am one of two listings for my last name. Can it really be worth that much money for a domain? Thanks in advance.

Domain redirection

triolus — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 08:49:44 -0800

Anyone know of a free DNS system that offers "domain aliasing"? I have a domain, and I only host it on my home machine. Currently, I have the domain set up with an A record pointing at my (dynamic) IP address, with the www third level being a CNAME to my dyndns.org address.

Problem is, if my IP changes, my second level domain will not work (however, www.mydomain.com will work, thanks to the CNAME). I want to have my entire domain pointing to my dyndns account. I know that an experimental directive (DNAME) will do what I want. Anyone know of a good, free/cheap DNS service that can do this for me?

Stopping the blog spammers

bamassippi — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:08:24 -0800

I want to start a Wikipedia page featuring the domains of blog spammers. Does one already exist?

I don't want to advertise Easter Island vacations

easternblot — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 12:36:11 -0800

Let's say someone accidentally let their domain name expire, and then quickly paid to renew it, how long would it generally take for everything to come back up? And where did the e-mail go in the mean time? The domain registration company is not the same company as the one where the site is hosted, but it remembered the DNS it was on. My payment came through alright, but I didn't get their info e-mail because I gave them a fake address (by accident). I already put in a support ticket with the company that hosts my files to ask them about it, but they tend to take a while, and I don't have a while! (My orchestra website is hosted on the same domain and it's concert season!!)
I assume all the files are still there (right???) but what happens to e-mail that was sent to that domain in the time it was gone?

Of course, this is all purely hypothetical, and I'm asking for a friend of a friend who doesn't have internet access (I would never be so stupid to set the e-mail address for notification of expiry to a non-existent address!)

Does domain backordering really work?

tozturk — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 13:19:08 -0800

Does domain backordering really work? There's a domain name that I want to own that expires on November 18th. The name currently points to a blank page and whois information shows that it belongs to some generic group.

What are the chances that I'll get this name if I put it on backorder if the group isn't prompt to renew? Am I just wasting 20 bucks?

How long does it take?

Domain hijacking?

gleenyc — Thu, 26 May 2005 12:42:29 -0800

I have a blog at http://depravedlibrarian.blogspot.com (I've also registerd the domain and will eventually put up a forwarding page). I misstyped this in the location bar: http://depravedlibrarian.blogpsot.com and found that registrant for this site and all the other Amazingbiblestudies sites (I checked 3 other Blogger address) is the same registrant. While it's not exactly domain hijacking, what can I, or should I do about this? How else can I get the word out about this? Thanks for your suggestions.

What should our non-profit's domain name be?

DakotaPaul — Thu, 12 May 2005 14:57:15 -0800

Our non-profit group is setting it's first web site, and we're having some trouble deciding on a domain name. Our group's name is fairly long, e.g. Some Generic Organization Name, so somegenericorganizationname.org is a bit unwieldy. Since sgon.org is already taken, we were thinking of getting sgonblah.org (where blah is a word related to what we do).

We want to get both domains, and have sgonblah.org redirect to somegenericorganizationname.org, our "official" address. But that got me to thinking: if I want to put our email addresses on the site, things like info@somegenericorganizationname.org are pretty long. But then people might wonder why info@sgonblah.org has a different domain than the address in their browser's location box.

Or, are we going about this backwards? Should sgonblah.org be the official address, then redirect the long one to it in case someone assumes that’s it? We're all brand spanking new to this web hosting and domain stuff, so I thought I'd ask the experts what the etiquette is. Thank you!

Fake contact info in domain registration?

bondcliff — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 08:35:30 -0800

Is there any good reason why I can't put a fake address and phone number in my domain registration info? I registered a domain a couple of days ago and I just got a call from some company asking if I needed help designing my new site. I don't need spam calls, thank you very much. Then there's the issue of privacy. I'd rather not have the entire word know my name and address. I might want to say something snarky about somebody some day.

I know there are ways to get a private registration or I could just rent a P.O. box, but both of those options will cost money.

The site is a personal blog. I can't see any reason why anyone would need to contact the administrator or the technical guy, both of which are me. As long as I list a valid email address I can be contacted. Will I be violating the US Patriot Act if I list 1234 Doody Ave, Bonerville" as my address?

How do I register an expired domain name?

XQUZYPHYR — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:17:32 -0800

How do I register an expired domain name? I want to register a domain name, so I did a WHOIS search and discovered that the domain expired about two weeks ago. Entering the address yeilds a 404 and there were faint remnants of a tiny site in a Google cache. So I'm pretty sure the domain was registered for a gag, or on a whim, and forgotten.

Unfortunately, because a WHOIS record exists, even one saying the expiration date is (was) last month, trying to enter the domain in any registration service says the domain is already taken.

I really don't want to pay the ridiculous sums of money any of those "monitoring" services charge- is there a simple, cheap method of resolving this?

Is Yahoo a good domain registrar for the price?

madman — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 13:07:37 -0800

Yahoo is now offering domain name registration for $4.98 per year. I have my domains registered with GoDaddy but a couple are due for renewal soon. Is Yahoo's deal too good to be true? Have any of you had bad experiences with them? Should I switch?

3rd party POP3

paul_smatatoes — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:08:53 -0800

Say you've got a domain and a server, but the account didn't come with any POP3 setup. Assuming you're not going to abandon that hosting provider for one reason or another, what's the best 3rd party POP account provider? And is this a huge headache?

Corporate Email Question

inksyndicate — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 13:52:07 -0800

Is there such a thing as a Web site where you can type in the name of a particular organization or domain, and find out what e-mail scheme they assign their employees? Let's say you're trying to locate John Smith at the fictitious Omni Product Corporation...then you could look up the company and find out whether they typically give out addresses that are "john.smith@omniproduct.com," "johnsmith@...," "js,"...etc.? I realize this sounds like a spam apocalypse, but it would be so useful.