General Domain Information

Pope Francis Using PopeFrancis.com

You probably heard about a Chicago man who registered PopeFrancis.com back in 2010. Shortly after  Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina was elected Pope, the lawyer who registered PopeFrancis.com offered to donate the domain name to the Vatican and the new Pope.

PopeFrancis.com is now being used, and a Whois search shows that  Direzione  delle  Telecomunicazioni  SCV at the Vatican is now the registered owner of the domain name. I am not sure when the Vatican took possession of the domain name since it appears to have been made a private registration in mid-March through April.

The website looks very similar to

Interesting Aspects of Hunter Douglas Domain Name Email to Vendors

Someone shared a newsletter from Hunter Douglas, a company with one of the best reputations in the window fashions business. The email newsletter was to inform vendors / dealers that they need to purchase their own domain name for websites showcasing their HD products.

I want to share their interesting recommendations with you:

What Makes a Good URL?
DO
If needed, use domains with city names or relevant keywords
Example: blindsomaha.com
DON’T
Purposely misspell words
Use other ‘endings’ such as .biz, .org or .net
Purchase more than one domain
Use the name Hunter Douglas or HD (Per Corporate Advertising Guild lines)

One other interesting thing was that Hunter Douglas recommended that dealers use Dynadot for their domain names. I am not sure if it’s any type of affiliate program, but it’s a great opportunity for Dynadot. I am sure many of these businesses don’t know a whole lot about domain names, and having a recommendation like this is golden.

Winner of the Crowdsourcing a Website Idea Contest Announced

I would like to thank everybody who submitted their ideas to the Crowdsourcing a Website Idea contest that I guest posted on Elliot’s Blog a few weeks ago.   There were many good ideas, and, as expected, quite a few opinions J.        I would also like to publicly thank Elliot for his willingness to try something different on his blog.     This is one of the reasons why I approached him with this idea, and it is one of the many reasons why I have been regularly reading his blog since 2007.

After reviewing all of the submissions and considering all of the potential models for building IdeasOnDemand.com into a revenue generating website, I have decided to go with the “contest” model.   I believe this model offers a viable solution to a problem encountered by many business, particularly small businesses and startups.

Congratulations to

Would Love to See This List Data

Every day, Domaining.com is filled with websites that share lists of names that are coming up for sale or auction. One thing that I think would be very interesting to look at would be a master list of those domain names that were mentioned 6-12 months ago and the current owner.

I think it would be interesting to see whether these investments would have been good (meaning an end user owns the name) or whether they are currently unregistered or owned by a domain investor. This wouldn’t be a definitive list since a domain investor-owned name wouldn’t necessarily equate to it being a less valuable domain name, but it would be interesting to see how many have ended up being bought by an end user.

Making this data even more valuable would be if someone used DomainTools Whois History Tool to track the end user-owned domain names and see if a domain investor owned them in between the time they were publicized in a blog and the present time. If that’s the case,

Crowdsourcing a Website Idea Contest Has Ended

A week ago, I posted a contest “Crowdsourcing a Website Idea.” The person whose idea was selected by the domain owner managing the contest would receive a $500 prize. There were 70 comments posted and many great ideas, and the contest is now over.

I know that the contest was scheduled to end on April 4, but the contest is being closed a few days early. I was informed today

What Domain Tool Would You Like?

Every so often, I think of a domain tool that I would like to have, and I ask around to see if someone offers what I want. More often than not, I learn that an industry company already offers that tool, and I can decide whether it’s worth signing up (and possibly paying) to get access to it.

Once in a while, I think of something that doesn’t exist yet, and I can either ask a company to create it or I can hire a developer to build something for me. The advantage of the first is the cost and time savings since I don’t have to do anything other than wait, and the advantage of the second is that I can have exclusive access to something beneficial to my business.

If you have a tool in mind that you think might benefit you, and you want to see if it exists or you’d like someone else to create it, I invite you to share something that you would find beneficial. There are several

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