Picking a domain name is hard

Domain Names

The world wide web was made public to the world in 1993 and since then the market for domain names has gotten weird. I remember growing up learning in school that if something was on a .org TLD, it was probably trustworthy (unless it was Wikipedia - “anyone can edit that!”). Now, anyone can buy one for $10.

Browsing the internet felt magical, and somewhat scary at the same time. This was back when Windows without an anti-virus was like walking through a mine-field without a metal detector. The only real domains that you came across were .com and maybe .com.au if it was Australian enough.

Startups

I recently had a eureka! moment and decided it was time to put my idea out to the world. Maybe I’ll blog about it when I’ve gained some more traction. In any case, we needed a domain. Somewhere people can visit so that they can feel like we’re professionals. Given this wasn’t some typical SaaS (sorry, .io), and I didn’t really want to make another account, I was left with what Cloudflare offers.

Well, the only Cloudflare offering that was relevant to me was .com. Have you ever tried to buy a unique, two-syllable .com domain?

It feels impossible.

So I tried coming up with different names for the service and product. In fact, I came up with just a tad over 100.

Discovering a new name

I had a good name in mind. You know the kind that really gets across to Joe Schmoe, what you’re about? The problem, of course, it was taken. It was beautiful, short, and catchy. But taken. Just like the last seat on the train after a long day at work.

The next couple of hours were spent brainstorming. Trying again, and again, and again. Realised that I was getting increasingly pissed off watching the .com box on Cloudflare go from click-able to grey.

It’s been a good long time since I’ve touched Google Sheets, but I was using it to keep track of the names I tried and thought;

Why don’t I just get a script to check for me?

The script would automatically check every single name I typed up, under the .com TLD, checking its availability for purchase. 3 hours later, I had relatively few good names, and even less that were available. Who’s buying some of these shitty names?

Good enough

I searched long enough that I kind of just realised that maybe I’ll come across something good, but I’m basically just procrastinating at this point. So I settled. I found something just good enough, and I’ll stick with that.

There isn’t really much of a moral to this story, besides the fact that the internet has been around long enough that it’s quite hard to be unique in a way that you, personally, like.