Domainr Blog

2013-04-14

Announcing Domainr for Android

The official Domainr for Android app is now live in the Google Play Store.

Huge props to Connor Hindley for his work on it — like the iOS and Windows Phone apps before it, Connor hacked it together in his spare time and got in touch with us about possibly shipping it. According to Connor, who’s currently wrapping up his CS degree at Northern Illinois University, “A clean / straightforward API goes a long way.”

And like our other mobile apps, we’ve released the source on Github in case anybody wants to learn from Connor’s work.

Special thanks to the folks who contribute to these open source libraries, which we’re using in the app: ViewPagerIndicator, ActionBarSherlock, and HoloEverywhere.

2013-03-06

Domainr for Windows Phone 8

The Domainr for Windows Phone app has been updated for Windows Phone 8, courtesy of Scott Lovegrove. And like the previous release, its source is available on Github (in the WP8 branch).

Thanks Scott!

2012-12-01

dNominator: Domainr-powered iOS app

Congratulations to the team at Alpis Design for shipping their iOS app, dNominator — it’s a fun little utility for brainstorming project names, and it uses Domainr’s API to show domain availability.

Check it out in the app store.

2012-11-18

New Feature: Autocomplete

We just added something incredibly useful to Domainr: TLD autocomplete.

To try it out, add a . to the end of your search, then a letter, like c — the search results will show every TLD that starts with a c.

It also works for second-level domains, like .co.uk — type .co. in your search to see all of them.

This functionality also works in Domainr’s API.

Bonus feature: Keyboard Shortcuts — Domainr’s intern/hacker extraordinaire @connor added Up and Down arrow-key support, so you can use your keyboard to navigate up and down search results.

2012-10-05

Domain advice from Dan Martell of Clarity

Our friend Dan Martell gave Domainr a shoutout in his Quora post about how he named his new venture, Clarity:

“Why did Dan Martell choose a .fm domain name for Clarity’s website?”

“Here’s the reason behind the Clarity.fm… I was using http://domai.nr/ to test different words that I felt were on topic, and I didn’t expect anything Clarity [dot] would be available, but when I saw Clarity.fm - I realized that it could work. The .fm represents the broadcast nature of the first version of the app when I use to share my link http://clarity.fm/danmartell on Twitter and take calls from my followers.”

“One thing I’ve seen over time is that domains - in the early days - don’t matter. Evan Williams made that argument here… So yeah, I didn’t want the .fm - I wanted a great word that would represent the essence of the product, and I couldn’t believe Clarity.fm was available for $70 bucks.”

“Now, the better question (which I won’t cover) is, should you have the extension in the logo ex: Clarity.fm, or not: Clarity. We did both, for me - it came down to a personal audio esthetic and I hated hearing “Clarity dot fm”. It’s Clarity.”

2012-08-26

Announcing Domainr’s Registrar Directory

We just published a new page on Domainr: the Registrar Directory.

Comprehensiveness is one of our core product goals, and this collection of Registrar-Domain coverage is what makes Domainr’s search results both useful and actionable.

The directory currently lists 228 Registrars and Registries, most of which support domain registration. We also show how many top (and second) level domains they support, as well as whether or not they support IDN.

2012-08-23

SideProjects eBook

If you’re curious how profitable side projects work behind-the-scenes, be sure to check out this new eBook, Side Projects.

We’re excited that Domainr’s story was included, from our humble HTML + JS beginnings in 2008 (which @rr prototyped on @case’s Mac Mini), to when @ceedub joined and we formed our LLC, to its current state as one of the web’s premier domain search destinations.

(Domainr v0 screenshot)

A few updates to the story told in the book:

re: the section about our team, “had two partners” = “have two partners,” as the three of us still actively work on Domainr together.
re: the tech stack, we finished our Ruby port earlier this year, so Domainr is currently a Rails app (hosted on Heroku) that uses a Node backend for doing DNS checks (also on Heroku).

And regarding Domainr’s API ecosystem, a bunch has happened beyond our iOS app, for example:

@connor got in touch with us about the Domainr Chrome extension he built, which led to his “nights and weekends” internship with us in San Francisco this summer — he’s since made API wrappers for Objective-C, Node and Python, as well as a CLI and Twitter bot.
@scottisafool emailed us about the Domainr client for Windows Phone he built, which led us to partner with him and launch it officially.

We thoroughly enjoy working on Domainr, and are thrilled that it’s turned into such a popular and useful tool for entrepreneurs worldwide.

2012-06-14

Explore the New gTLDs in Domainr

Domainr now supports searching ICANN’s 1,400+ new generic top-level domains, which were publicly revealed on June 13, 2012. Here are some example queries:

ICANN intends to evaluate the new domains for the next 9-20 months before launching them, so it will be a while until they’re live and registerable.

In the meantime, have fun exploring them — the full list is on Domainr’s TLD page.

2012-06-07

Domainr Chrome Extension

Domainr’s official Chrome Extension is now available in the Chrome Web Store.

Install it to search Domainr directly from Chrome, and use your Up and Down arrow keys to navigate search results — the Enter key will open a new tab with your search.

According to Google Analytics, Chrome is currently used by 55% of Domainr’s monthly visitors, so we’re excited to make it even easier to use inside Chrome — huge props to @connor for his work on the extension.

Check it out, and let us know what you think on Twitter and in our forum.

2012-05-10

Domainr for Windows Phone

Domainr is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace, and its code is open source on github thanks to Scott Lovegrove, a UK-based Domainr fan and Microsoft MVP.

Scott built the app on top of Domainr’s API and contacted us with a few questions about it, and we asked if he’d be interested in open-sourcing it and publishing it as an official Domainr-branded app. Fortunately he was game — Thanks, Scott!

Development of our iOS app several years ago happened similarly, and also prompted us to build the API in the first place — our hope was that developers would use the API to “scratch their own itch,” which has happened for a variety of different languages and apps.

Check it out and let us know what you think in Domainr’s forum.