It really burns me up when I see an Ad for a business (any business), and they include an @aol.com email address (or some other “generic” email provider).  It is really quite simple (and inexpensive) to own your own domain name (and all the email addresses that go with it).  This way, you own it forever (assuming that you pay your bills), and control your own email destiny.  Now I realize that it’s no longer 1996, and you may think that all the good names, like goosedroppings.com :-) , are already taken.  But a little creativity and a few helpful websites can help you come up with a good domain name that you might even be able to pass on to your children.

  1. Come up with a name
    This really isn’t as hard as it sounds.  Most last names (Even obscure ones like “Goose”) are already taken in the .com space.  If you’re looking for a personal domain (as opposed to one for a business), consider extending your search to include .net &.org.  Try adding words to your “base” name; goosefamily.com, thegooses.com, goosemail.com, thegoose.com, tgoose.com, etc.  Some sites, like whois.sc, let you enter a base name, and then they’ll give you all domain names that contain that word anywhere in the name.  This might show you a name that is used in .org, but available in .com, etc.
  2. Register it
    I’ve tended to stay away from the big providers, like networksolutions, since they seem to be much more expensive, and for the life of me I can’t see what additional value they add.  For goosedroppings.com I am using godaddy.com, for other domains I’ve also used dotster.com.  In either case, I paid a few dollars extra for a service that “cloaks” my true identity.  Not because I’m some celebrity that’s trying to hide from my public, but because spammers are known to harvest this information for active email addresses.  Do your self a favor, and don’t be cheap here.
  3. Sign up with a Web/Email provider
    Even though we’re initially only looking for a place to host our domain, there are many places that are providing additional services for a very reasonable
    (only a few dollars per month) price.  For example, this blog is hosted by racknine.com, using free software that they maintain (WordPress), that’s available 24x7 with great bandwidth, for no additional charge.  Others in this space are Blue Host and Simple Host.  All three allow you to maintain the services for your domain (doesn’t that sound so professional) via an easy to use, well designed, and powerful tool called cPanel.  With the right technical know how, I could do this on my own at home, but why would I?  These guys all have just about everything I’ld ever want, much more bandwidth, and all for about the price of a NYC taxi ride.

    Any of these Web Host Providers can provide you with the technical help on how to update your records at your Domain Registrar (i.e. godaddy.com) to tell the Internet to deliver all traffic directed at your domain to their servers.  They can also help you set up your email program (i.e. Microsoft Outlook) to connect to them to retrieve mail.  Or if you’ld prefer, you can use a free web based tool (cPanel offers 3 different web email programs: neomail, squirrelmail and horde).

  4. If you want, you can stop right here.  However, you might (I know I did) want to send a duplicate copy of email to another email account, so that you can use better/different tools to read and write.  Or you can help route email for your whole extended family.  In my case, grandpa@thegoosefamily.com (BTW, the email accounts have been changed to protect the guilty) gets forwarded to his personal email account grandpagoose@optonline.net; grandma@thegoosefamily.com goes to ggoose@aol.com (don’t ask me why she continues to use AOL.  All she ever uses from them is email!); johhny@thegoosefamily.com goes to jgoose@middleschool.edu, and I send my email to goosedroppings@gmail.com.  (This one is actually a real address).  Why gmail?  I think that they’ve got a great user interface, I love the idea of “tags” vs “folders”, and 1 gb of storage plus lightning fast searches is unbeatable.  In addition, they provide decent anti-spam filtering.  But doesn’t this defeat the purpose of owning one’s own domain, if all email I send from gmail looks like it came from goosedroppings@gmail.com?  Well that would be true if they didn’t allow me to configure my account so that the REPLY-TO address is thegoose@goosedroppings.com.  If I ever tire of google’s service, or  if something better comes along, I just log into cPanel, and change where my email goes.   No need to contact both of my friends with my new email info :-)

To paraphrase Seinfeld (sic) ”You too can be a Master of Your Own Domain”!!!

    - The Goose