Domainr Blog: Archive

How to Acquire a Domain Name (That Someone Already...

Background: We created Domainr almost four years ago, and since then many people have contacted us asking how to buy domain names that other people already own. We’ve not yet been through that process ourselves, so we asked our friend Julian Shapiro, founder of NameLayer, to write a guest post describing how it works — here’s Julian’s advice: 1) Direct Contact If there are no contact...

Feb 19th

47 notes

Domainr's new development environment --...

We’re almost done with Domainr’s infrastructural overhaul: we’re moving from Python & Django on App Engine to Ruby 1.9.3 and Rails 3.1 — we’ll discuss the reasons for this in a later post. We ran into a few development environment hiccups while working on the port, so Cameron made this gist to automate setting up our general dependencies. The last mile just connects...

Jan 26th

Looking for a GoDaddy alternative?

If so, definitely give Kevin Cheng’s thorough post about his quest a read. Domainr supports most of the registrars he investigated, but let us know if there are any you’d like us to add.

Nov 17th

.tv = Serious Revenue for Tuvalu

The Guardian: “Tuvalu’s GDP is so tiny — about US$37 million — that a line item on the budget measures sales of national stamps and coins to collectors… Royalties from the sale of the domain name, which by last year was used by about 110,000 Web sites, could reap Tuvalu US$40 million in a decade. Such funds largely paid for the 2002 tar-sealing and lighting of the roads on...

Nov 8th

Decommissioning Domainr's RSS Feeds

We will be decommissioning Domainr’s RSS feeds on Monday, November 14th, 2011 — email us at ping+rss@domai.nr if you need them for some reason.

Oct 24th

1 tag

'Round the Tubes

Domainr has gotten some nice write-ups around the web recently—here are a few that we’ve noticed and appreciate! Geno Prussakov’s case study on Domainr’s utility for finding available short domains, as well as its affiliate revenue model. Zach Browne’s post about finding the perfect domain name.

Nov 6th

Domainr API Apps

We’re glad to see Domainr’s API getting some use — here are some example apps utilizing it: iOS Quick Domain Check (iPad, iPhone) Domainster Android Exygy Domains

Nov 5th

Domainr for iPhone

Domainr for iPhone is now available in the App Store! Huge props to our good friend Sahil Desai, who built the app in his spare time because he wanted an easy way to search for domains from his iPhone. In fact, he reached out to us back in 2009 about building the app, which prompted Randy to build out Domainr’s API for this exact sort of use. Thank you, @Sahil! We’ve also made the...

Aug 24th

IDN ccTLD support

Via @domainr: “Domainr supports all three new TLDs: http://domai.nr/about/tlds#idn” Props to @rr for pushing out the update!

May 8th

Domainr for Android

Hey Android users, Our compatriots at Exygy have whipped up a neat little app* that uses Domainr’s API for doing domain search. Check it out! (or use barcode scanner to snap this QR code) the app is called, “Exygy Domains” in the Android Marketplace.

Mar 21st

2 tags

Short Domain Search

Domainr’s search results now show vowel-stripped “shortened domains,” which have become quite popular recently thanks to services like Bitly and Awe.sm. Domainr does its best to show whether or not it’s possible to register a domain, but many NICs and Registrars have their own rules for things like minimum # of characters in a domain, etc. If you encounter an error in...

Feb 9th

20 notes

Affiliate Programs Need Unit Tests

Kelly over at Hunch has done some investigative digging into one of their affiliate relationships that was mysteriously not converting. Domainr and Hunch share an affiliate-based business model, where both are search sites trying to help people find what they’re looking for: “We signed up to the Best Buy affiliate program through Commission Junction, and tested Best Buy links in...

Oct 4th

Welcome, Smashing Visitors!

The folks at Smashing Mag very kindly mention Domainr in their post about finding, registering and managing domains: The popular Domainr service comes as easy and clean as it gets. They call themselves a “domain name search engine” and solely focus on the domain search experience. Searching for a domain name is very intuitive and fast indeed. If you found a name you can choose from a list of...

Aug 29th

Registering a .nr domain

Occasionally we hear questions from folks about Domainr’s .nr domain, inquiring about the .nr registrar’s scary registration process. It’s definitely one of the sketchiest-looking webapps we’ve ever come across, but the process worked for us, and Cameron’s described it over on Get Satisfaction. Here’s a summary: go through the process on Cenpac’s web...

Aug 1st

1 tag

Domainr and Design

We recently heard from a Domainr user via email, inquiring about a design technique used to create Domainr’s look and feel. If you’re curious about that sort of thing, take a look at Randy’s writeup: ydnar.com: CSS Images, Sprites, and iPhone Webkit

Jul 18th

Web Worker Daily on domains

WWD has some great advice for folks searching for domains for their projects, and we concur: “I think that you can take the “get a dot-com at all costs” mentality too far, so you may want to consider alternatives to .com.”

Jul 3rd

Keep Registries and Registrars Separate

CircleID: “Since 1999, when Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and ICANN agreed on the separation of NSI’s combined registry and registrar functions, the market as grown from about 5 million to over 100 million domain names in the generic TLDs. The registrar companies grew from a solitary one to over 900 (500 active) strong, and retail prices of registrations plummeted from $35.00 per...

Jun 21st

Announcing the Domainr API

Hey developers: check out Domainr’s new API, which lets you embed domain search directly in your site. Here’s what it currently returns: domain possibility: send a string, and Domainr returns domain hack permutations domain availability: whether or not domains are already registered registration: direct links to registrars so your users can register domains You can choose the...

May 24th

Domain Hacks Are Short Domains

@domainr: “Domain hacks are the original short URLs. They’re as resistant to link-rot as the rest, except they cost money.” Lately URL shorteners have been making headlines, and some of the coverage is definitely exciting. This is just a friendly reminder that domain hacks can be inherently short, and you should totally consider one for your site/service if you’ve got links to...

May 24th

Use Domainr to help name your stuff

Smashing Magazine’s running a really, really great piece about choosing domain names. It’s way more than that though—they’re talking about name selection and iteration in a very insightful and strategic way. “Meta,” even. Some key takeaways: domains can be discoverable or brandable names can be assembled in a number of different ways: compounded, blended, phrased,...

May 5th

1 tag

More Tubes

Domainr’s gotten some great coverage recently out on the blogs:Mind of Michael’s 10 Excellent Tools for Picking a Domain Name “Domainr is an innovative web tool that helps you explore other TLD’s that have made popular websites like last.fm and del.icio.us stand out from the crowd. Of course, searches will also include popular top-level domains that are...

Apr 29th

Money Quotes on the proposed new gTLDs

Props to DNW for calling out these awesomely-relevant quotes from The Man Himself and George Kirikos regarding the proposed new gTLDs: “A world of infinite top level domains goes backwards to a flat space, instead of a tree structure, and would be a step backwards and not an improvement.” [GK] … “There have been temptations for the registry companies to consider themselves...

Apr 15th

Some TLDs are just Really Hard to Register

We’ve been emailing with our contact at 101domain about a Domainr user’s difficulties attempting to register a Nigerian (.ne) domain name. Her note below is both helpful and insightful, as it explains how difficult it can be to register some TLDs: “…the requirements by each country domain registry are actually enforced, and we can only comply. There is no way around it,...

Apr 14th

Two new domain hacks

From Jonas, domains scored via Domainr: Is it raining in Dublin? (about) Saccades

Apr 1st

Re: 101domain

Twitter user @elliottcable just sent a somewhat troubling message our way: “isn’t sure what to think of @domainr. Looks pretty sexy, but seems to be affiliated with the scammy 101domain.com (1,000$ for every domain)” We asked him for details, and it turns out some .com domains cost a bit more than normal there: “@domainr Oddly enough, a bunch of .com domains. The...

Mar 31st

Updated iWantMyName support

As our ideegeo friends down unda continue enhancing their iWantMyName domain service, we continue updating Domainr’s support of it. The latest additions: .lc .ht .com.sb .tel

Mar 26th

1 tag

We're in frakking Wired!

We understated this a bit in yesterday’s post, but Domainr’s in this month’s Wired! Being mentioned in such a renowned publication is a huge honor for us, as Wired’s been a major influence on us all during its 15+ years in print. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons Eric ended up living and working on software in the Bay Area. Having grown up in rural Ohio, it was...

Mar 25th

1 tag

Further 'round the Tubes

We’re honored by Domainr’s recent appearances on these fine sites: #7 on LifeHacker’s Top 10 Tools for your Blog or Web Site “One reason so many new-fangled webapps have such crazy, vowel-deficient names is because the net seems almost completely picked over for .com addresses. Don’t sacrifice your clever idea or give up on your name, though—head to...

Mar 24th

♥ Tinyarro.ws

We’re obviously fans of URL hackery, but Tinyarro.ws takes it to a new level. Dave digs it too. Domainr lets you check availability of domains like these, so grab some dingbats from ⌘C ⌘V Character and start playing!

Mar 23rd

ccTLD Forum Discussion

Especially relevant to Domainr users considering non-.com domains is the new ccTLDs Forum, where you can find plenty of country code-specific domain discussion. We’re in agreement with both DNW and Rick: “Latona is a big proponent and believer in country code top level domain names, although he became a convert only last year. His world travels taught him that there’s more than just...

Mar 12th

A Small Slice of Pie

Google Analytics gives us a whole host of interesting information about our visitors. One thing that really stuck out when looking at this data today is that Internet Explorer accounts for less than 10% of our traffic—3rd place—while Firefox and Safari account for nearly 80%. After that caught my eye, I dug in a little further to see how people using different browsers tend to use Domainr....

Mar 5th

1 tag

Growing Pains

Domainr’s front end is hosted on Google App Engine, which provides us with a (usually) stable, fast platform that lets us scale with relative ease. Over the past few days, ongoing performance issues have caused Domainr’s performance to suffer. We’re working hard on a contingency plan. In the meantime, you can also search for domains on these other sites: NameBoy, DomainFinder or Domize.

Mar 4th

2 notes

TLDs are Yellow Bubbles

ICANN posted a simple graphic showing the TLD breakdown, visually: Domainr supports all these TLDs, as well as another 1900+ second-level domains—you can see them on each TLD’s page.

Mar 3rd

International Domain Laws

The Domains smartly reminds us to check countries’ rules and regulations before registering their domains, and lists some examples: .ca and .eu have “presence requirements” China routinely shuts down .cn sites that violate its rules Vietnam just published new rules for .vn domains We’ve updated Domainr’s “Is it safe?” FAQ with this info—thanks The...

Mar 2nd

VeriSign, Quoted

Funniest (emphasis mine) and simultaneously most impressive quote from VeriSign’s 2008/Q4 report: “VeriSign processed peak loads of nearly 50 billion Domain Name System (DNS) queries per day in the fourth quarter of 2008, resulting in hundreds of millions of Internet users accessing Web sites or sending email. The VeriSign DNS continued to maintain operational accuracy and stability...

Feb 26th

123-reg on ccTLDs

We dig UK registrar 123-reg’s writeup on why you should consider using country-code domains for your sites; here are a few of their reasons: it shows that you’re aware and serious about international markets they can be used defensively against typo-squatters they can help with SEO One of the main reasons we built Domainr was to increase exposure to country-code domains, of which...

Feb 25th

1 tag

Feeds, or Domainr API 0.1

ydnar just gave Domainr a bit more sauce—its search results now output in Atom and RSS (example). Why? Good question. The answer’s probably somewhere between, “Why not?” and, “Django made it too easy not to.” While we’re unsure of the actual usefulness of feeds in Domainr, we’re hoping they’ll prove interesting and/or worthwhile in unforeseen ways. For example, you could toss a Domainr...

Feb 23rd

4 notes

New gTLDs: It's the Content, not the Conduit

Domainr is agnostic toward controversial issues like ICANN’s proposal to sell new generic top-level domains. Domainr covers the entire domain namespace, and we’ll support new TLDs if and when they launch. Domain Name Wire’s got great coverage of the issue, and we agree that: there doesn’t seem to be real demand for new gTLDs IDN’s continued rollout is more important...

Feb 20th

Domainr and Mechanical Turk

Inspired by Andy Baio’s mturk hacking and documentation, we used Mechanical Turk to round up the dataset with which we originally launched Domainr. Our goal was to gather a canonical list of second-level domains available at each top-level domain (for example, .ac’s list), to be parsed by Domainr’s search engine. Three sets of workers compiled lists for us, ensuring that we...

Feb 19th

Eritrea Domains

After Domainr had been live for a few weeks, Cameron did some digging in the logs to see what was happening. It turns out that Eritrea’s TLD, .er, was the most searched-for domain in our system. We didn’t know anything about Eritrea other than the fact that it’s geographically wedged between Ethiopia and the Sudan on the Red Sea. We knew from our prior research that it’s...

Feb 18th

Domainr and the Aftermarket

Domainr does a great job helping people find new domain names. But what if a domain’s already been registered? That’s a likely possibility, given that hundreds of millions of domains are registered every year. It turns out there’s a vast aftermarket of domains for sale, so we did some digging to see how we could integrate aftermarket availability into Domainr. Since we’re...

Feb 17th

1 tag

FAQ: How does Domainr make money?

Domainr makes money via affiliate relationships with domain registrars. For example, if you click the Register link and end up buying a domain from one of these registrars, we’ll get a small percentage of this amount for referring you to them. It’s quite nice of them to do this!

Feb 17th

1 tag

Domainr 'round the tubes

Domainr’s been getting some linkage lately from ‘round the blogs: Barbarian Group: our friend Noah gave Domainr props on both his personal and work blogs. Rock! NameThis: somebody’s looking for a domain for their geotagging-related site, and reckons Domainr can help. crush3r: Ericson snagged robo.to with Domainr’s help! Agitationist: considers Domainr one of his five...

Feb 16th

Web Sites Explained: Simply

Our friend Buster just posted a nice little writeup about how web sites work, as part of a meme titled, “try to explain something difficult that you’re familiar with.” His step 1 is Register a domain, and he very kindly links to Domainr. I’d suggest doing these things in a slightly different order, however: Start a weblog on a service like Blogger—it’s free, takes...

Feb 10th

1 tag

IxD FTW

We were surprised (and honored!) to see Domainr mentioned in Eris and Jina’s excellent prezo, Interaction Design for Web Designers: Eris defines IxD as “the design of behavior,” and Wikipedia describes it as “the discipline of defining the behavior of products and systems with which users interact.” Regarding Domainr, they’re contrasting its UI (hand-crafted by ydnar) with the utterly...

Feb 7th

1 tag

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...

Jan 27th

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!...

Jan 23rd

1 tag

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,...

Jan 22nd

3 notes

1 tag

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...

Jan 21st

2 notes

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...

Jan 20th