.info domains
Posted by Michael Dale on Sat, 11 Sep 2004 11:12 AMJust recently http://www.domainsite.com were giving away free .info domains. Up do 25 domain names per person. The big draw card was that no credit card was required (unlike most domain resellers) to signup and this allowed many people under the age of 18 to sign up a free domain for a year.
Josh did a bit of a rant about the .info situation over here: http://www.joahua.com/blog/2004/09/10/domain-grabs
So I thought I'd reply to this, and of course I don't agree with most of the things he says (heh).
Sad, but true - the Internet often turns into a grab-and-run enterprise.
Although this maybe true I don't see any problem what so ever in the free .info domains. Afilias decided to allow domain resellers to give away (or sell at a very small price) these domains. As they are the .info gTLD registry maintainers they have say over the terms (well the whole being free thing) of the give away. It is the same with .tk domains, sure they aren't as feature rich but I don't see anything wrong with it. There is a small cost in providing these domains. Bandwidth for the name servers, web control etc but it is so negligible that it doesn't really matter (bandwidth is cheap, just not in Australia).
grab-and-run enterprise? I'm not sure where that fits into this promotion.
The most immediately obvious technical/social problem associated with this is namespace dilution.
Ttehehhe, it is the end of the know universe!!! Someone registered omgiownj00all.info. That is going to have severe ramifications for everyday live! ;) *ahem*
In terms of falling Page Rank, brand recognition and potential confusion of domains
I really doubt it. Joahua.com doesn't really have any "brand recognition", hell I cannot even pronounce it :p but I wouldn't be worried about some .info domain anyway. If you say I have a website called "Joahua" the first address they're going to try is joahua.com then joahua.net and then maybe if you're lucky even joahua.org. dot.info domains don't even come into consideration, they're the poor man domains of the internet :p
Page Rank? I think you need to worry about Joahua B. Easterly first :p People DO have the name Joahua! Scary! ;)
I spose if you owned joahua.info first I could see you wanting joahua.com because it is just so much cooler! And it is possible that people might get confused. But in all seriousness if you tell someone your domain name (be it .info or .com), I really don't think it matters what is on that other tld. But you don't need to worry now! You have both. Time for .net .org .com.au .net.au .org.au .tk etc etc :p
I once had another .net domain and the .com variant was in fact a porn site if I remember correctly. Heh.
Now just to make it clear. I have NO problem what so ever with these free .info domains. Go for your life (hell I did! :p). So congratulation to your new .info domains josh. I just think your reasoning behind getting them is weird. A better reason is "because it is free!"
Speaking of these .info domains I now have a few to assimilate into the dalegroup collective ;)
http://dalemail.info
http://mwdmeyer.info
http://swyles.info (hehe)
http://dalegroup.info
Onto another topic, Wordpress!
Yesterday Matt Mullenweg ( http://www.photomatt.net ) killed the trackback on his site. This caused issues for some wordpress users trying to send a trackback. What happened is that the user's wordpress site timed out because it failed to open a socket on his site. I opened up the trackback sending code and had a look. I've since sent a bug fix to matt and should be included in a nightly build sometime. The bug fix is just to stop the trackback fopen function taking longer than 5 seconds and thus timing out the site.
The fix is as follows (although might be changed in the nightly build):
Functions.php line 561 (around there).
$fs = @fsockopen($trackback_url['host'], $trackback_url['port'], $errno, $errstr, 5);
The following link is also to another bug that can be easily fixed and is recommended:
http://mosquito.wordpress.org/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=0000066
Happy wordpressing.
BTW: I don't use wordpress, strange but true.
What? You're always talking about WordPress - I assumed you were an avid user...
What? You're always talking about WordPress - I assumed you were an avid
user...
No no, coded this site myself. Although the trackback sending function is a modified version of the one found in wordpress. I just found a few bugs and patched them up.
dalegroup.com here I come! *in 2007* :S
Ah yes, the trackback function you shared with me. I am getting close to implementing that on my site. It's a little more work than I thought! The toughest part is actually getting the trackback URL for each post.
Ah, users of WordPress have everything done for them! Not us! :)
The following two things are main way I get trackback to work.
$newsid = mysql_insert_id(); (this finds the last entered id into your database, great for getting the news id).
And then my trackback url mod_rewrite:
RewriteRule ^archive/blog/newsid/trackback([/]*)([^/]*)$ /inc/mytrackbackfile.php?newsid=$2
I started to pen a response, and then Susanne crashed for the first time since I'd installed it! Maybe I should stick to paper...
Anyway. This doesn't deserve a new post and trackback, because that'd get messy if we kept going. So I'm commenting here.
The effects of brand dilution won't be felt for a few months, as people may have registered domains "just because" without any idea as to how they're going to use them. The namespace is taken, at any rate, and decreases accessibility accordingly, if people trying to access a website at that address can't do so due to cybersquatting. That said, I agree with your comments regarding the respective values of gTLD's, but think it remains important, nonetheless.
In terms of PageRank, I'm not just thinking of my own website, although that provides a convenient base example of SEO, because I have control over it. I'm confident that my website will be the number 1 match for "Joahua" in a short period of time, simply because I've only shown up there in the last 24 hours, with an older edition of my website (e.g. before insano SEO began).
That, and I'm continuing to actively "promote" the website through comments, amongst other things.
But I think I'm drifting off topic now, so I'll stop. As an aside, you need to edit your dalegroup.whatever root page to say dalegroup.info as well as .net and .org -- and get the relevant .com, of course ;)