Domainr - blog

FAQ: Is it safe to register any domain on Domainr?

Probably.

There are hundreds of top-level domains and thousands more second-level domains, but we've only personally registered domains under a few of them. Fortunately Wikipedia has lots of great documentation about each one.

If you're worried, do a little research: Lots of information is available if you search Google using queries like .io TLD, .tt top level domain, or register .es. If a particular registrar looks shady, look around for another one. If Domainr ever links you to a registrar that scams you—we haven't heard of this yet—be sure to let us know.

If you're still feeling uneasy, try to find examples of other people registering domains under whichever TLD you're checking into. A few good experiences by others can go a long way to helping you feel comfortable with some of the more exotic domain registration processes.

Update, 2009-02-20:

The Domains smartly recommends checking countries' laws, rules and regulations before registering country-code domains.

Permalink Friday

Find an interesting domain in Domainr and want to link to it from an email or your blog? You can link directly to it like this: http://domai.nr/fleetfox.es/.

Bonus! For a limited time, permalinks also work for top-level domains (http://domai.nr/com/), second-level domains (http://domai.nr/co.jp/), and even searches (http://domai.nr/white%20house/).

2x Combo Bonus: IDN support! http://domai.nr/☺.com/

Can Haz Everything (and Poland too)

Some domain search sites only return results for a handful of top-level domains, and most registrars only show you TLDs for which they handle registrations. While this might be useful for the registrar, it’s not necessarily best for the user.

Domainr covers the whole taco entire domain namespace, so your searches aren't arbitrarily limited. There are hundreds of country-specific domains, and thousands more second-level possibilities for each country domain, and Domainr searches them all:

• Generic domains like .com, .net and .org
• Country domains like .au, .es and .jp
• Second-level domains like co.uk, org.au and net.nz
• Sponsored domains like .asia, .jobs and .mobi
• Poland

Domain Name Search

Domainr is a search engine for domains. It breaks down your searches into possible domain names by checking both top-level and second-level domains, then tells you if they’re available for registration. By popular demand we added .com, .net and .org to its result list.

Domainr also supports IDN (internationalized domain names)—domains with accents, diacritics or other scripts like Hebrew, Korean or Cyrillic.

We’re exploring ways to make Domainr’s search results more useful, so definitely leave us a comment here (or on Get Satisfaction) if there are improvements you’d like to see!

Domainr: Powered by Open Source

Domainr is powered by open source software. Here's an overview of the systems and packages we used to build and operate it:

Frontend

• Django: the Python-based webapp framework
• app-engine-patch: enhanced Django support for Google App Engine
• nbio.django: our Django middleware
• jQuery: the javascript framework that powers Domainr's dynamic interface
• YUI Reset CSS: Yahoo's CSS library that gives html elements default styling in modern web browsers

Backend

• Twisted: the Python-based networking engine Domainr uses for talking DNS
• Rails: the Ruby-based webapp framework that powers the admin app we use to administer Domainr's data (TLDs, SLDs, registrars and metadata)

Operations

• Google App Engine: serves Domainr's frontend. While a proprietary platform, its SDK is open source.
• Ubuntu: the Linux distro that powers Domainr's backend
• Git: our version control system of choice

Domainr Feature: Status Checking

One of Domainr's most important features is its ability to quickly check the status of domains you're searching for. It checks the DNS to see if your searches have any entries, and if it doesn't find any, assumes they're available for registration. This works for most domains, but some have implemented wildcard DNS—we've tried to catch as many of these as possible (like .st) and indicate this in Domainr.

Availability is entirely different than possibility though—sometimes top-level domains have their own registration restrictions. Here are some of the ones we've encountered (and indicate in the site):

• minimum length, like .in's 3-character minimum
• top-level registerability, like .ar
• international character support, like .com

On Choosing the Right Domain Name

Entrepreneur Magazine recently posted an article about choosing the right domain name—here's a summary:

• give some thought to what your domain should be
• it'll end with .com, .net, or a bunch of other top-level domains
• don't stuff your domain with keywords
• try to get a .com
• buy your domain from your web host, or through a separate domain service
• register your domain asap (and park it), even before building your site
• good domains should be short, not have hyphens, and contain a few-word summary of what the site/service is
• sometimes you can find good domains for sale in the aftermarket
• be careful when choosing a registrar

We'd like to clarify and mention a few things:

• don't just give the naming process some thought, give it lots of thought. It'll likely be your site's home forever, and it'll be what search engines like Google index and surface in their search results. It's also what bloggers and other web sites will use to link to your site, so you better get it right! One of the reasons we built Domainr was to make the process of finding the right domain as fast and easy as possible.
• domain names aren't preceded by http:// nor www. Web browsers take care of the http part for you, and the www is merely an artifact from long ago.
• sometimes stuffing a domain with keywords makes sense, like when you're making a single-serving site and want your domain to make a statement. We did this with Sarah Palin is John McCain's New Bicycle, and Al3x did this with Down for everyone or just me?
• we agree on trying to get the .com if possible and affordable, but keep in mind that lots of your visitors/users will be arriving from search engines, not typing in the address manually. For example, people might remember using "Domainr" but forget that it's got a funky URL. As long as they remember that we dropped the e, they'll find it in Google very easily.
• the domain aftermarket is interesting and we've recently begun learning about it. We're pondering adding support for it in Domainr's search results—taken domains would appear as "for sale" or something like that, rather than just "taken." Popular aftermarket sites are Afternic, Sedo, Pool, Snapnames, Namejet and GoDaddy Auctions.

[via DNN]

Registrar User Experience

One of the reasons we built Domainr was that we couldn’t easily find good UX in the domain space*. We focused on domain search because it was an immediate need that didn’t seem to have been addressed well elsewhere. Domainr does one thing and (we think) does it well: domain search. It’s like Google’s search engine in that its essential purpose is to help people find what they’re looking for, and get them to it as painlessly as possible.

A bit of background: Randy’s been designing stuff for multiple decades, and Cameron and I have been Cupertino fans since our parents got us Apples and Macs back in the 80s—Apple and Steve have forever carried the design torch for the tech industry. My five years at Google, part of which was under Marissa's tutelage, reinforced the need for good UX beyond any doubt.

Providing registrar services is beyond the scope of our (totally bootstrapped) company, so the best we can do for our users is send them to other registrars. Naturally, we’d like to send them to registrars whose ethics (and user experiences) are in line with ours.

One fantastic example here is 101domain, which provides registration services for over 700 top-level and second-level domains. They do a bunch of things really well, which makes them a good match for Domainr:

• their site is decently designed, and they have a weblog
• they handle IDN domains
• their forms are designed such that Domainr can post directly to their search script
• their landing pages for posted searches flow naturally with what users would be expecting: “I just found the domain I want, so now I’d like to purchase it.”
• when a domain has registration restrictions, they explain them clearly and include an estimated completion time

If you’re a registrar and would like to integrate with Domainr, follow 101domain’s lead and do these things, and do them well. Focus on providing your users an awesome user experience, and definitely get in touch with us!

∗ Eventually we learned of Gandi and iWantMyName, which rock.

How Domainr Came to Be

Last April, Randy and I were watching Galactica one night and talking about URLs and domain hacks. Eventually one of us realized that a URL hack generator could be relatively easily developed with some regexp. 45 minutes of Textmate hacking later, Randy had a JS prototype ready on my Mac Mini and we’d begun learning lots about the domain namespace. As we pondered what to call it, we plugged different ideas into its form and it eventually named itself—Domainr (with apologies to Flickr, of course).

I was still working at Google at the time (though I was almost done), and Randy had already left Six Apart, so it naturally became one of our side projects. Since App Engine had recently launched (and I’d been following its development since its btaylor days), we hosted it there to keep ops to a minimum. And we kept using it week after week, having fun iterating on names for other product ideas we had. We showed it to a few friends and they loved it, so productizing it became increasingly likely.

Then in September we learned that Cameron had left Get Satisfaction, so we chatted with him about possibly starting a company together. He was game, and dug Domainr as our first official product because it had revenue potential and was already prototyped, so we scheduled a week-long hacking session in Mendocino to build it out. Five days later Cameron had learned both Python and Twistd to build Domainr’s backend, Randy had finished polishing Domainr’s UI and implementing its frontend, and I’d finished Mturking a launch-worthy dataset, writing our static content, and assembling various product-meta things.

Domainr launched on October 18th, 2008 and has been fascinating to tweak and grow ever since. Nearly 70,000 people from over 150 countries have used Domainr, and are currently spending an average of 8 minutes per visit playing with it. Feedback from friends and the wider web has been enormously positive, as we've apparently created an fun and useful UX for people searching for oneoff domains. Be sure to let us know how you like it, and how you’d like to see it improved!