Don't have domain name yet? Most .com ideas already taken

Picking a company or product name always has been difficult, but the Internet has made it harder.

It used to be that all you needed to do was pick a name that nobody in your area was using, then register it with the local government. But today many businesses plan, or plan to plan, to promote their company or product on-line, so another consideration enters the picture -- the Internet domain name.

For instance, let's say your company is called Front Range Promotions. Wouldn't it be nice to have the frontrange.com domain name? Sorry, it's too late; that name went early in 1996. You could have frontrangepromotions.com, but, well, it's a bit of a mouthful.

OK, how about Boulder Promotions? Well, the boulder.com domain name was snapped up way back at the beginning of 1994, when most Americans thought the Internet was an international criminal conspiracy.

Boulderpromotions.com is available, though, but again, it's a bit of a mouthful.

You may already have this problem. Many well-established businesses, on deciding to get onto the Internet, have discovered that they are unable to get the domain name they want or need. In fact, it seems that whatever name you want ... it's gone. (If you haven't yet registered a domain name for your company, I suggest you do as quickly as possible, because one day you may need it. It costs $100 for the first two years, $50 a year after that.)

I've run into this problem myself recently. After having more than 30 of my books published by established publishers, I've decided to publish one or two books myself. I need to come up with a company name, but, of course, I plan heavy Internet promotions for these books, so I want a name for which a domain name is available.

I have fairly simple criteria for the name. It must be easy to pronounce and to spell. When I'm a guest on a radio talk show, for instance, I want to be able to quickly state the company Web site address, without having to spell out the name. That's the mistake I made with one of my early choices; I started off with Arundel Press, and was pleased to find that the domain arundel.com was available. But try saying "www.arundel.com" to Americans and they won't have the slightest idea how to spell the name (the British will, but that's not a lot of help).

The problem is, whenever I think of a company name, I discover that someone already has the associated domain name. To check to see whether someone's using the name you want, you can use a form at http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois. You simply type the name, including the .com bit at the end (but without the www. bit at the beginning), into a form and press Enter.

So I've spent a lot of very frustrating effort at this site recently.

I'd been thinking of using the name Geek Free Press, but quickly discovered that geekfree.com was taken. Ground Zero Books came to mind, but that was taken late in 1994. Then my wife came up with the idea of using English Pub names; surely nobody would have taken them! Red Lion Press, Black Horse Books, and so on. But they're gone, too, along with whitehorse.com, bluelion.com and greenlion.com (not that the last two are pub names, but I was getting desperate by then.)

"How about Crows Nest Press," said my wife. I liked it; sounded good, easy to spell ... but somebody had registered that just 10 weeks earlier.

"Alright, then," I said, in a nautical frame of mind and with my tongue firmly in my cheek, "what about Poop Deck Press -- I bet nobody's got that." My wife ignored this comment, but later on I checked to see if perhaps that was available -- though I'd never use it. Funny thing is, it's not available anyway, it was registered last June.

How about a name using numbers? I thought surely nobody's registering domain names using numbers! But 123.com's gone. So has 1234.com, 12345.com, 123456.com, 1234567.com, 12345678.com, 123456789.com, and even 12345678910.com! My telephone number .com hasn't gone, but, well, that would be going too far.

The moral of this little story is that if you want a domain name, you'd better get it now, as quickly as you can, if you can, or it'll be gone by the time you need it!

Start by checking the names at http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois, then find a friendly service provider or Web-hosting company to which you can register the name (a name has to be

registered to a particular computer connected to the Internet, so you have to arrange before hand where the name "points" to). Then go to http://rs.internic.net/rs-internic.html and follow the instructions for registering your name.

You also can use a domain registration service (search at http://www.yahoo.com for such a service); with such a service you can register a name without having to find a service provider or Web-hosting company first. The company registers the name to its computers, then changes the registration to point to a different computer later, when you're ready to use the name.

The situation may change a little near the end of this year, when seven new "first-level domains" will (perhaps) become available: .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info, and .nom. (So frontrange.firm and frontrange.store will become available, for instance.) However, there are problems with these names. First, the .com domain will for some time remain the domain of choice, as people are used to hearing ".com," and browsers have been set up to use .com as the default address type (type arundel into any recent browser and press Enter, and the browser will assume you mean www.arundel.com).

Also, there's some question as to whether these domain names really will be released, as the plan has not been approved by all parties concerned. And even if the names are released, there'll be a huge rush to register new names on the first day, so you'd better get in line right now!

Peter Kent is publishing Poor Richard's Web Site: Low Cost, Geek Free,Common Sense Advice on Setting Up a Web Site; you can contact him at richard@arundel.com for more information.