So let’s say I wanted to buy a website domain name (let’s say for setting up family servers and email domains), and my preferred .com is already taken. Of the remaining choices, how do you rank the following?
.me
.co
.info
.tv
.biz
.in
.net
I’m assuming .net is at the top, because I’ve actually seen it in the wild. But I don’t think I’ve ever been to a .me or a .biz. .tv doesn’t seem to be too relevant for these purposes. So what say you?
I would rate them the following, based on my personal biases, and no actual research.
.me vanity websites
.co company websites - usable - from Columbia
.info spam websites often sold for cheap
.tv third world domain that happens to be the abbreviation for TV
.biz legitimate domain for biznesses
.in India
.net The best of the bunch. Meant for groups involved with networks, but anybody can use it.
Minimus.biz sells travel sized goodies, I LOVE that place!
Forget about doing it. Suppose you get munch.net because munch.com is taken. What happens? The majority of the people who want to visit your site will type munch.com instead.
If you can swing it, the last two letters of your surname. For example: http://www.johnsmi.th/ or http://john.smi.th/ if you want to hand out subdomains to other members of your family.
No love for dot org? I’d put that after dot net.
I vote for changing your desired domain to one that’s available with the .com top level domain. You can use this Web site to find ‘lean’ domains: http://www.leandomainsearch.com/
It suggests available .coms based on relevant key words you provide.
Buying up the .nets and .orgs that match your .com is worth the money but I can’t see how making your primary domain a non .com could be worth it.
I’m with the others who say that it’s a mistake to use anything but .com for a business website. I’ve been using a piece of software for eight years now. Their site ends with .net, and - I kid you not - every time I want to see what’s new with this company I type in softwarename.com, get send to someone different, then I go to Google and type in softwarename and click on the link from Google. I just don’t remember that I want softwarename.net until after I’m already there and I don’t go there often enough to make it worth cluttering up my bookmarks with it.
If I was going to rank these things from 1 to 10, then I’d say this:
10: .com
5: some garbled, long .com necessary to make it original, even if it’s pleasebuymysoftwarebecauseitscool.com
4: a .com with any kind of punctuation in it
3: .net, and all of the other classics like .org, .edu, .co.uk and the like.
2: .biz, .tv and .info
1: everything else.
They’re all pretty bad, but .net is definitely the best.
Also, because some people mentioned it, can just anyone get a .org? I thought maybe there were some restrictions on that.
Yeah, I left that out because I’m under the same impression.
com.au!
There are restrictions on .gov and .edu top level domains but not on .org.
No. In fact setting up a domain for a family like the OP asked was just the sort of thing it was originally intended for. I think the confusion is that it was specified as for “non-commercial” entities and that kinda sounds like some sort of legal entity like a non-profit but we never meant it that way.
I had a private .org site back in the mid 1990s and no one ever questioned the “credentials”. That was back in the idealistic days that only businesses would be using .com, organizations .org, etc so if anyone was going to be a stickler, it would have been then.
.com, only .com.
And even that should be unnecessary. Extensions were a bad idea in the first place.
As for .org, I have it and .net registered solely as redirects to the .com; and deeply resent having to. In any case registrars rarely ask questions.
.edu
If you have access to a machine within a .edu domain and can generate email addresses with the subdomain, you can do lot’s of interesting things.
E.g., you get Amazon prime free for a year. Once the year is up, switch to a different address, repeat.
For anything else, .com is all you’ll ever need unless you legally need to have something registered outside the US.