.com vs. .net

[milefile]

What's the significance? Is there any difference? I hear that .com is the best but it's put off as some sort of a priori assumption. My email is .net. This site is .net.

I ask because there's a domain I want to register but it's not available in .com.

What do you web gurus think?

 

[Pako]

Generally speaking...,

.com is for Company Domains
and
.net is for ISP's.

I ran into the same problems with my domain. All the good .com's were used up, but what the heck, I settled for a .net.

Anyhow...

 

[milefile]

Looks I will do the same. Your opinion is good enough for me. Well, if Jordan wanted to chime in I'd listen. What gets me is nobody is using the domain. When I type it in I go to some search engine. I can't remember which now.

 

[epic]

When I try to register ones it says its taken already but when I type in the address it doesnt exist. I hate the internet!

 

[milefile]

Yeah I think people register them intending to sell them for a profit. Maybe I oughta' get in on that.

 

[epic]

that is illegal you know?

 

[milefile]

Really? Who knew?

 

[epic]

I did . I tried it once, I was going to register I think it was ea.com cuz their domain dates were ending soon and I was going to resell it for big profit but I got an email and I quickly changed my mind

 

[milefile]

What did the email say?

 

[GilesGuthrie]

You can't register a domain unless you have a legitimate claim to it. Therefore, registering domains 'speculatively' is effectively illegal.

However, you would be able to argue that you had a claim to ea.com if, say, your name was "Eric Anderson".

I find that a great site to use for checking up on domains is www.checkdns.net. It reports on the complete status of the name, including which parts of it are configured.

You may find that a domain with no web site is used for mail routing (for example, look up trans4m.co.uk). Sometimes companies will put a holding page up if they're doing the mail routing (see www.club-des-pilotes.com and www.ukmotorsport.net).

On the .com vs .net issue, I think that it's best to take a complete approach, and register all of the TLDs for your choice of name. This way, whatever someone types, they'll be directed to your site. Avoid hypens (as in www.giles-guthrie.com). Hyphenated domain names look nicer, but people seem to have difficulty with the hyphen (hence I also have www.gilesguthrie.com and www.clubdespilotes.com).

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by GilesGuthrie
You can't register a domain unless you have a legitimate claim to it. Therefore, registering domains 'speculatively' is effectively illegal.

However, you would be able to argue that you had a claim to ea.com if, say, your name was "Eric Anderson".

I find that a great site to use for checking up on domains is www.checkdns.net. It reports on the complete status of the name, including which parts of it are configured.

You may find that a domain with no web site is used for mail routing (for example, look up trans4m.co.uk). Sometimes companies will put a holding page up if they're doing the mail routing (see www.club-des-pilotes.com and www.ukmotorsport.net).

On the .com vs .net issue, I think that it's best to take a complete approach, and register all of the TLDs for your choice of name. This way, whatever someone types, they'll be directed to your site. Avoid hypens (as in www.giles-guthrie.com). Hyphenated domain names look nicer, but people seem to have difficulty with the hyphen (hence I also have www.gilesguthrie.com and www.clubdespilotes.com).

No wonder your a mod.

 

[Jordan]

Well, if you are going to buy a domain name, I highly, highly recommend registering a .com if you can. There is no telling how much traffic we have lost because of GTPlanet's .net domain name, but unfortunately that is what I had to settle with. Hopefully I will be able to purchase gtplanet.com soon, though.

 

[milefile]

I seriously doubt the .com one I want will be available anytime soon. I have gone to the site and it is overseas and seems to be going quite strong. I'm willing to be flexible to a degree but it gets to a point where you can't compromise anymore or you won't even have the domain you wanted.

 

[Pako]

That's kind of where I was... To get the .com that somewhat resembled what we wanted, it would have had to be:

www.blue-onion-band.com

we considered:
www.blue-onion.com

but it was too close to that catering company out of Lake Tahoo and we thought it would be less confusing to have it www.blueonion.net. So there we are, a blues band out of Montana with a ISP domain name...at least we're setup with a domain if we decided to expand our services and start offering internet access, eh?

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I'm not sure that anyone pays attention to the .com/.net distinction any more. I know where you're coming from, and people do definitely go for a .com first, but people don't think that GTPlanet is an ISP just because it's a .net.

 

[milefile]

I'll occasionally type in GTPlanet.com out of habit.