What's in a [Domain] Name?
Category: Design...
Posted Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 08:07 AM [GMT-6]

I wouldn't normally link to an article of this nature as it contains some references that are, shall we say, on the other side of tastefulness, but it's also a valid reminder that details are important when creating a website for your business. Keep in mind that the sites mentioned are (or were at the time the post was made) real websites for legitimate businesses.

It occurs to me that until the web became ubiquitous, there was never any reason to think about the seemingly harmless space between the words of a business or organization name.

Of course, there are some who might suggest that consideration should also be given to the acronym associated with, say, blog names.

Tip o'the hat to the occasionally bilingual 網絡暴民 Jacky's Blog, one of the true "link blogs," the genre that once ruled the blogosphere.

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Comments

I saw that list a couple of weeks ago and refrained from posting a link to it for the very reasons you mentioned. That, and I'm gutless.

My cowardice did not stop me from laughing myself silly then, nor did it prevent same just now.

Posted by: Jim at November 29, 2005 10:23 AM

Eric, absolutely hilarious ... but also a lesson to be learned. In that, I see some similarity to the lessons learned in the print medium, in composing headlines ... where mistakes can be every bit as offensive, hilarious, embarrassing, etc.

Posted by: Jeff at November 29, 2005 10:43 AM

Jim, I have the excuse of linking to it for professional reasons...at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Jeff, I know what you mean, although at least with a headline, the pain doesn't last long, whereas an embarrassing URL is the gift that keeps on giving...

Posted by: Eric at November 29, 2005 03:35 PM

Along similar lines, have you noticed that you can do fun (and childish) things with CNet's URLs?

Part of the URL is the title of the article, but it seems to be meaningless to the webserver: you can put whatever you want there, and still get the article.

Example - here's a real link:
http://news.com.com/Apple+spends+a+bundle+on+iPod+ads/2100-1047_3-5978598.html

And here's another one that works just as well:

http://news.com.com/Apple+woos+Eric+with+new+ads/2100-1047_3-5978598.html

See? You can kinda personalize 'em.

Posted by: Brian at December 1, 2005 01:27 PM

Brian, I'm not going to ask you how you figured this out.

But it is an interesting use of the URL, and I can't tell how it's being used. At first, I thought it might be the key words that are used to create "The Big Picture" feature that provides visual relationships to related stories (a pretty cool application in and of itself). But when I inserted "Microsoft+Longhorn" in place of the other text in the URL and reloaded the page, The Big Picture display didn't change.

I know you meant to have fun with this, but it's also an intriguing detail that merits some additional research. It's not an inconsequential thing to serve up those additional characters for every CNet URL, so you have to wonder why they're doing it.

Posted by: Eric at December 1, 2005 01:59 PM
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