Do I buy the domain name now?

[Shaz]

I'm working on plans for my first game - sorting out mechanics, level advancement, getting ideas for graphics. I've come up with a name I'm happy with and it's not used for any other games, and the .com is available. I've actually never seen another game that's similar, but that just means if one exists I haven't come across it yet (I'm sure if that's the case I'll find out about it as soon as I announce here that a demo is ready!)

Catch is, I don't have the smarts yet to program it - at uni learning that now, and it'll probably be at least another 12 months before I can begin in earnest (of course that's a lot of time I get to spend on designing).

Do I grab the domain name while it's available, knowing it'll be mine when I'm ready to use it? Or do I hold off, waiting until I've got something worth hosting, that the idea is viable, that I don't decide to change the name a dozen times between now and then (in which case I'm sure I can just let my registration lapse and go looking for a new one) and risk it not being available down the track?

I'm looking at godaddy - as I understand I can register the domain with anyone I like, but when it comes time to build my site I can host with anyone I like as well - doesn't have to be the same company - is that right?

Any advice/comments on ANY of the above will be greatly appreciated! Off to buy my Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games right now!

[Rubs]

I think it is pretty soon to buy a domain name yet. As you mentioned, you need something to host before. By the time you are ready with the game, its name may well change. You may find some name that will be more suitable and more 'marketable' and your domain will be lost.

Building a positive cashflow is pretty difficult in the beginning, so hold off your expenses until you really need to do them.

Just my 2c. Cheers!

[mash]

Why don't you sign up a hosting provider (Lunarpages or somebody else) who give you a free domain registration?

[Sybixsus]

Why don't you sign up a hosting provider (Lunarpages or somebody else) who give you a free domain registration?

Because then he'd pay for a year of hosting a non-existant site ( approx $80 at LunarPages ) to save $8/9 on a domain name?

For the sake of a few bucks for a one year registration, I can't see any harm in snagging the domain name now.

[mash]

You're right! You need something to host. Make your homepage. Fill it with affiliates (carefully) and finish your game.

[Shaz]

But what about all those great domain names that have been snagged but there's no website? Those people are all just holding the name for themselves for when they're ready to use it, or are holding it 'cause they think it'll be worth a lot to someone else one day. None of those people have anything to host.

I don't want to sign up with a hosting provider 'cause I have nothing to host & I have no idea, yet, what to look for, so there's a huge danger in locking myself into something I can't get out of without losing my coveted domain name. All I want is to make sure, when my game is ready, I'll be able to have the domain name I want.

Thanks for your replies - keep 'em coming. (and Sybixsus, SHE please! ;-) .... I did buy The Indie Developer's Guide.... last night and skimmed through - VERY happy to see a girl on the cover as well - it made me think I'm not crazy in this man's world)

[Drake]

I also would vote for buying the domain now. All the more so if the name is relatively short and/or a combination of real English words. Domains are cheap; buy yourself a little peace of mind.

[Sybixsus]

and Sybixsus, SHE please! ;-)

Well since you're probably the only person in the history of the world to spell Sybixsus correctly, I guess it would be churlish of me not to apologize for the gender confusion. In my defence, I've often done the same thing in reverse and assumed someone was female only to be corrected, so at least I'm an equal opportunities screw-up ;)

[Shaz]

In all honesty, I had to scroll down 3 times to check the spelling was correct! Some people just don't consider others when choosing their user ids.... ;-) (how come I can't add smilies in my post?)

[Andy]

Shaz if your upcoming domain is something like my_awesome_new_game_GAME.com you can wait without any problems.

If you've chosen really good and short name ( something like DWICE.COM ;) ) and domain is still available you SHOULD order it right today.

[Huge]

Buy now ! I don't think domain names will ever depreciate in value - it's very much like real estate. You can always using something like dyndns.org to point it at your ISP's free webspace. There is at least 1 domain name I regret not buying - after a while thinking about it, I went to buy it only to find it went 2 days before. One day we will tell our grandchildren "we could get an 8 letter domain name for $8.50" and they will laugh at us and tell us we are speaking bollocks.

[Huge]

Ha, funny thing about my last post. The name opened up again. I guess the person could not make money off it, and "returned" it for store credit. Now it's mine (maniacal laugh).

[HairyTroll]

I remember putting off buying 'crook.com' because at the time the only place selling domain names was Network Solutions for $75 a year. A couple of weeks later the domain was gone.

Get the domain now. If you change your mind you can let it expire in a year.

[Fost]

I 100% agree with the above - get it now if it's something you really are precious about.

In fact - the act of searching for a domain can (depending on what search system you use) alert some nefarious types to the fact someone is interested, and you'll find it gets registered anyway - I've had this happen.

One other tip - register with a dynamix dns service like www.freeparking.com

these allow you to point the domain at any server you need - something that has been invaluable when moving hosting companies. You can even put up a temporary page with them until you want to set up your website.

[Shaz]

Interesting point. I've gone to godaddy twice after my initial search showed the name was available, and I wondered if they (godaddy) might "notice" me checking up on it and I'd soon find it taken, so I stopped. I never considered anyone else might have access to see what I was looking for.

But I think I'm going to get it now. Godaddy also allows you to point it at any location, doesn't it? What does www.freeparking.com (http://www.freeparking.com) offer that godaddy doesn't (or are they different types of services)?

[Fost]

Godaddy also allows you to point it at any location, doesn't it? What does www.freeparking.com (http://www.freeparking.com) offer that godaddy doesn't (or are they different types of services)?

Can't help you there I'm afraid as I've never used GoDaddy. I'm not really pushing freeparking over anyone else though - just my opinion that it's best to go the dynamic dns route rather than registering the domain with the place you are hosted, which I've always found to be a problem.

I think there's a pretty good thread on hosting in general on the forum somewhere which might be of help and goddady were mentioned somewhere in there.

[Sharpfish]

Shaz > godaddy is fine and totally flexible in where you want to point the nameservers to. Your "domain" is seperate from any hosting you may buy and can be changed at any time just like freeparking. HTH

[gmcbay]

I've never used Freeparking, but godaddy does give you full control over the DNS for your domain, so you can point it anywhere you like. Alternately, you can have them host the domain and do a URL redirect to any other URL if that works better for you. If you're buying the domain with godaddy, I don't see how it makes any sense to use a third-party redirector because you can just do that from your godaddy account using either DNS or a URL redirect. And you don't have to host at godaddy just because you use them for domain registration (or vice versa) the two things are separate. In any case, godaddy's hosting is actually pretty good IMO. I've been using their Windows/ASP.NET 2.0 hosting package and have no complaints at all.

On the original question, this has already been stated, but if there is a domain open that you're sure is the one you want, buy it now. You'd be amazed at how quickly they can disappear, even if it seems like a pretty random name nobody else would ever think of. And people are correct when they say just searching a domain's availablity might cause someone else to register it. This isn't a case of godaddy or any other bigger registrar screwing customers, the problem is that when you search for domain availability on any registrar the registrar has to query all the other registrars to make sure the domain hasn't recently been registered. Underhanded people and some of the smaller/shadier registrars have been known to hook into the query system and if they see a decent name someone is interested in, they will register it and then try to sell it at very marked up price to the person who expressed interest.

Keeping all of this in mind, you are MUCH better off registering any name you like immediately if it is currently available. Registration fees for a year are pretty much pocket change these days. Why risk losing the name you want?

[zoombapup]

I've been gazumped on so many domain names that these days I reg any domains I even think of, no matter if they end up being a product.

[MibUK]

Freeparking vs GoDaddy

I've not used GoDaddy, but my domains are at freeparking.

I get..
redirect browsers to any other url via a cloaking page
Free 2Meg email aliases (5 per domain I think).
Or Free redirection to another email address for up to 10 names and wildcard matching.
Manually edit the Zone file within reason.

Only downside I've found now, will only let me put 1 address per name, whereas nearlyfreespeech.net recommends putting all three of their webservers in the A record, so any server can go down if necessary.

Also when I looked at GoDaddy a while back I don't think they do .co.uk names, which freeparking.co.uk does do.

Just my 2 cents, freeparking haven't been bad for me, but aren;t really under heavy use. the email facilities seem good to us.

[PrefixEx]

Absolutely buy the domain name now. Without hosting we are talking $10 or so dollars a year at places like godaddy.

The only reasons against registering the domain now are
A-- fear that the name is descriptive of the game that everyone else in the universe will see the name and be able to clone the idea before you can produce it. This is extemely unlikely.
B-- fear that game name domains are a bit dated (I would fall into this school of thought) and not useful. IMO, I think you are better branding the company than the game. Unless you are sure you have just one game and will never do another.

[PrefixEx]

Why don't you sign up a hosting provider (Lunarpages or somebody else) who give you a free domain registration?


You could sign up with Geocities for free and have your 8.95 domain redirected to the Geocities page for all it matters in the startup phase.

Your ISP may also provide some free webspace as part of your monthly fee wihich can also serve as nice starting site for your redirected web address.

[Shaz]

Thanks guys for all your feedback. I DID go out and buy it, and I have my preferred domain name waiting for me to add a game to ;-)

Re: someone else seeing the name and cloning the game - how will they see it if I'm not directing it anywhere? I'd think they'd only realise if they searched for the same name and saw it was parked. You could probably get ideas for half a dozen different types of games based on the name alone - there's no other information anywhere but in my head (and slowly forming as a design doc), so if anyone does see the name and come up with their own game, it's not likely to be too similar and regardless - I've got the domain and they haven't ;-)

Re: registering the company name - I'd be happy to do that, but I'm having troubles coming up with one. I've got until my game's released to do it (or slightly earlier if I follow Joe's methods) so I'm not stressing on that one (though I HAVE thought of a few and they're already taken by non-gaming companies - naturally!)

As I get closer to having something to host I'll be checking out different providers, but I think there have been a few threads on that topic that I can go back to as a starting point.

[Matthew Doucette]

Definitely buy it now. (I see that you already have, but I want to share my thoughts anyway.) I have a little experience with domain names, and I've lost a few due to the assumption that they would still be around when I needed them. Luckily they were for minor projects, so it was no big deal. If you check out sites like www.namepros.com, you'll see that they buy, hold, and try to sell domain names that you would never think are worth anything. Ultimately, the insurance of having the domain name is worth more to you than the reg. fee, so buy it!

[Matthew Doucette]

Re: someone else seeing the name and cloning the game - how will they see it if I'm not directing it anywhere?

There are many ways to see domains you control but have done nothing with. One is the ever snooping Alexa:

http://alexa.com/data/details?url=joelonsoftware.com

I'll pick on Joel. Look under "See other sites owned" section on the left-hand side. It shows all domains in their database that match the whois records of the domain you are looking at.

Pretend www.sidepilot.com was a hidden project (it is not)... Alexa gives it away.

Many webmasters have complained about this because they host professional and amateur websites together. What if I wanted Xona.com (http://xona.com/) to have a web-presence "aura" (for lack of a better word) that my personal homepage, www.matthewdoucette.com, would destroy?

Incidentally, I am not too concerned with this, as I just want to be myself, not try to pretend to be a professional entity I am not. I think it would be cool if people who bought my software (whenever I start selling software) knew my personal side as well. People respect reality. I think that's why a "personal" business blog can actually benefit a business.