If you’re a client of ours, or you’re working with a designer and you haven’t submitted any copy to them for an upcoming design project, there’s a pretty good chance that the project will come back to you for revision stuffed with dummy text.

We love dummy text, as it fills out a design prior to getting the final copy from a client.Whether you’re a designer or not, dummy text can be helpful when you’re putting together documents with missing sections, email campaigns in progress or other design pieces that you don’t need a designer for. It’s also a great way to determine how much text fits into an area before you compose the copy.

Most people like to write a random sentence and duplicate it over and over. Unfortunately this strategy tends to be a little distracting:

“Random text goes in this sentence here. Random text goes in this sentence here. Random text goes in this sentence here. Random text goes in this sentence here. Random text goes in this sentence here. Random text goes in this sentence here. Random text goes in this sentence here.“

Thankfully there are plenty of alternatives. Since the early 1500′s the design industry has employed the use of several paragraphs of meaningless text called Lorem Ipsum. Looking very similar to Latin, Lorem Ipsum is a collection of meaningless words which believe it or not, is less distracting than plain English and allows the reader to focus solely on the flow of the design.  Lorem ipsum looks like this:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”

Obviously we’re not using Latin on a day-to-day basis any more so with the invent of internet came a whole host of other text generators which allow you to generate good old Lorem Ipsum or work with some fun and fresh new text.

Here are some of our favourites:

Lorem Ipsum Generator
Sometimes you just need some good old, Lorem Ipsum and this site has plenty. You can also specify the exact number of words and paragraphs to generate.

Blind Text Generator
With 10 different types of dummy text to choose from Blind Text Generator makes it easy to just click and generate the needed text for your composition.

Random Text Generator
Wow your readers with the ability to generate text in up to 15 languages.

Fun Ipsum Variations

If you’re looking to have some fun, or just want to see if your proofreader is paying attention, why not try one of these fun generators based on Lorem Ipsum:

Gangsta Ipsum: This is Lorem Ipsum with an urban flare – to give your designs that much needed izzle to the hizzle.

TV Ipsum: With a huge compilation of theme song lyrics and popular phrases of some classic TV programs, TV ipsum is sure to appeal to the TV buff reader.

Bacon Ipsum: Scare off your vegetarian readers with this generator which serves up a juicy side of meat-related words.

Gone are the days of being limited to only a handful of fonts as we can now embrace some really great options for generating a myriad of web fonts on your website.

In the olden days (ie. a few years ago) web developers were limited to a handful of fonts as your website needed to use a font that was installed on the computer of one of your visitors. Choosing a unique font could look great on your computer but you ran the risk of visitors only seeing it a basic serif or sans-serif font. Many designers found ways around this by creating banners that featured text loaded as images, which was a great option for sites that weren’t assembled dynamically. The other issue was that ‘tricking’ users with images instead of text also tricked you out of having elements of your page recognized by search engines.

Thankfully today there are several great options for expanding your font horizons on your site:

@font-face

A simple CSS3 rule that allows you to host fonts on your server and have them rendered via your website if the visitor to your site doesn’t have the font installed on their computer. This method is supported on Safari, Chrome, Firefox and some acceptance in IE.

To use the @font-face property, simply upload an otf font file to your server and then enter the following code into your CSS specifying the location of the font family:

@font-face {
font-family: GraublauWeb;
src: url(“path-to-the-font-file/GraublauWeb.otf”) format(“opentype”);
}

One drawback to using this technique is that you need to be licensed to use a specific font and larger companies could face lawsuits for using these fonts. Beyond this and a few browser compatibility issues, @ font-face is an incredibly easy way to add fonts to your website.

Cufon

Cufon is a font replacement solution that allows you to upload a font to the Cufon Font Generator and create a javascript file that can be uploaded to your web server. In many ways this works very similar to @ font-face but it’s been regarded as a more complicated way to implement and you can’t use it for body text on your website, so in our opinion why would you want to use it? Nevertheless many people still do continue to use Cufon so we felt it important to keep it in this list. If you need a solution to style headers in specific fonts, this could be for you.

Typekit

Founded in 2008 and currently owned by Adobe, Typekit uses javascript to allow users to embed fonts. It supports the @font-face property and all fonts available are licensed. Typekit is a subscription-based service with rates running from $2-8 based on the number of fonts you would like access to and the # of page loads in a month.

Google Fonts API

The newest player in the web font scene, what started as a project featuring 20 fonts now offers over 450 font families and the best part it’s free! The system basically works the same as typekit with fonts hosted on google’s server, but without the cost. To use a font, all you have to do is find the font in google’s directory and copy the embed code to place in the <head> of your website. The Google Font API means that you don’t need to use CSS3’s @ font-face method (while you do in Typekit) allowing complete cross-browser compatibility. Google Fonts is the best solution for anybody wanting to get their feet wet in the world of web fonts, there’s a large library to choose from and it’s well documented.

The changing landscape

As you can see, there are plenty of great ways to implement new fonts into your website for the beginner and master coder alike. So the only thing left is to get started and dive into the pool and start playing around with web fonts!

*Special note, while the title of this article is a crude play on words, it also happens to be the name of one of our favourite free font identification apps.

As an early adapter in nearly every facet of my life besides social media – it’s a little bit out of character for me to switch things before facebook does it for me but I’ve been intrigued by the big banner front and centre on the new timeline page and the ability that facebook is giving us to set the tone for the way our page looks and the message we get across to our friends.

Adding the new timeline is really simple, you just have to click the “add new timeline” link in the top of your facebook profile page. Once you’ve done that, you will be told that you’re testing out the timeline and it will automatically change to your account in 7 days – which is really nice if you want to play around with the layout.

The cool thing that I’ve noticed is that your main profile picture remains – now a perfectly square 125×125 pixels. This profile picture is complemented by a 850×315 pixel banner.

My new facebook profile featuring a huge amount of banner real estate.

From a marketing standpoint, I think this new banner is a great idea for anybody wanting to showcase their creativity and also plug what they do, what their passionate about or just a really big picture of themselves! I also think that there are some really cool possibilities for the integration of the profile image and the timeline banner so you might see something soon that blends the two images in some cool way…

If you want to upload an image to your banner it’s easy, once you’ve switched to the new timeline just hover over the banner and click “select new image” in the bottom right corner. You don’t have to worry about the size of your image (provided it’s larger than 815px wide) because you can drag the image around however you like to fit the banner. If you want to take your banner to the next level I would suggest preparing your image ahead of time at the proper size proportions and maybe add a little bit of design flare too!

The one thing I don’t love is that facebook downgrades the quality of your banner image. This may not be a big deal to most of you, but I would love to see a crystal clear image on that page if it’s going to be that big.

So as I write this, I’ve hit the “go live” button on my new timeline to avoid the 7 day wait and start using timeline now! Check it out http://facebook.com/csteingart and let me know what you think…

We’re constantly asked by our clients to tell them about what’s new and on the cusp in the online world so here’s our list of the top 10 things we see impacting your online presence in 2012.

10. Continued focus on minimal design

In 2012 designers will continue to focus on simple, clean and minimalist designs. The use of whitespace to focus a viewers attention is as important now to designers as it ever was. Keep your marketing pieces and websites free of clutter!

9. Facebook vs. Google+

Let’s get ready to rumble! The biggest fight this year will be between the old social media powerhouse (Facebook) and the old web powerhouse (Google) who wants to flex it’s muscles in the social media realm. It will be interesting to see how facebook adapts to more and more businesses moving away from fan pages to google+ pages, hopefully that means new and improved features, but you never know.  In any event, as a business or organization you need to be where your target market is.

8. Infographics

These have been popping up all over, a really cool and visual way to display information. If you’re conducting a customer survey or you just want to get some information across to your audience in a visual way consider infographics as a way to do it.

7. JQuery and HTML5 will give flash the boot

If you own an apple portable device you know that they haven’t offered flash support since day 1. What that means is a huge portion of the market is no longer able to view your flash banners, menus or other applications that were so cool and amazing 4 years ago. Adobe, the creators of Flash have seen this writing on the wall and begun focusing on PC browsing and more development of HTML5. So get rid of those flashy things on your site and convert them to HTML5 or JQuery now!

6. CSS3 is on the rise

Now that virtually any browser supports CSS3 you will see more mainstream websites incorporate these new features in CSS. This will result in more robust websites that load quicker (perfect for mobile devices) because they require fewer images to create rounded corners, shadows, gradients and much more.

5. Web fonts

2011 saw the upgrade of the Google Fonts library which was a huge step forward for the use of web fonts on the web. When you’re designing a site you want to use a font that is accessible on the end user’s computer or device but this is no longer a problem with the various web font options out there. There are a number of programs such as Google Fonts which allow you to link to a specific font to ensure that the viewer will see your typography exactly the way you intended – a cool option and great step forward!

4.Fixed position navigation

As page heights have continued to grow and designers begin to worry less and less about “above the fold” a number of sites have begun to bring back the fixed position attribute in their designs to allow the reader to always have the menu visible in the same location creating a consistent experience. This is especially helpful in mobile versions of websites when finding menu items can be particularly tricky. Check out this example to see a simple use of this design approach.

3. Goodbye IE6 & IE7!

As Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported by Microsoft their use will slowly die! Designers are counting the days till this exciting moment! Both browsers offer many challenges in the way that they display content and styles differently than just about every other browser out there. The resut their demise – fewer bald designers (no more hair pulling!).

2. Responsive designs hit the mainstream

One of the most talked about concepts in the design community was the use of responsive design for websites. The basic idea is that the website is set up to determine the resolution of the device that it is being viewed, as the page width decreases elements of the website layout change to accommodate this shift and the need for information to be more accessible on smaller screens. Want to see how it works? Check out css-tricks.com and play around with the width of your browser and see how the site changes size and alignment etc.. Responsive design will be huge this year as designers begin to offer this option to their clients instead of just trying it out on their own sites in 2011.

1. Tablets and Mobile Devices – the preferred method of browsing

This is the number one trend in web design in the coming year, it’s already here – but in 2012 it will get even bigger. The fact is that people are using mobile devices as the preferred way to experience the web. Nearly all of the previous 9 points have touched on this trend in some way or another so it’s really no surprise that these devices will take up a larger share of visits to your site in the coming year. What this means is that you need to consider things that make the experience for these viewers more enjoyable things such as no flash or a responsive design are a good start!

 An exciting year ahead!

2012 promises to be an exciting year as designers and developers continue to push the limits of our web today. Hopefully this list gave you a little insight into some of the coming trends and tidal waves. What other trends do you see as being important in 2012?

With the most recent release of Firefox (8.0) the void for a website with a missing favicon is now displayed by a dashed border, where it used to be just a blank page icon. This design change on the part of Firefox has highlighted the need for websites to have a favicon visible, otherwise their web presence looks a little bare.

The appearance of favicons in Firefox tabs and address bar - including the "dashed box" for the new tab or page without favicons.

A favicon is a 16×16 pixel icon is the icon that you create and identify to a browser, the browser in turn uses this icon in tabs, beside your URL in the address bar and in bookmarks. All you have to do is generate an icon saved in an ICO (icon) format, upload it to your website and link to it in your website’s header.

Generating a favicon

There are many programs online that allow you to upload images and create a favicon that you can download. We recommend using the free program at http://www.favicon.cc/. It allows you to upload an image or try your hand at creating your own icon from scratch.

From the Favicon.cc website click on “import image” then browse for the image on your computer and hit “upload”. The image will display in the large favicon box as well as the address bar of that page and in the “preview” box below the large image. If you’re happy with the appearance of the image click “download favicon” you can also use the toolbar to make some slight modifications to the generated icon before downloading if it doesn’t look quite right yet.

Some things to remember before you import an image, the favicon must be square if you don’t create a square image for upload the image will be stretched on you causing distortion. The favicon is small so as you’re setting up the image, you might want to shrink it down to a small size (say 32×32) before you import the image.

Once you’ve downloaded your favicon.ico file, save it to the root director of your website. In an HTML editor go into the header of your site (between the <head> and </head> tags) and enter this code:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”/favicon.ico”>

*be sure to alter the link to the actual path where you’ve uploaded favicon.ico.

And that’s it, you’ve got your very own favicon on your website.

Some favicon examples for your inspiration

Gluttony

The sin of overindulgence to the point of waste, Gluttony often refers to over eating although many websites also commit this sin. Have you ever been on a website with too much stuff that makes it overwhelming to even know where to begin? Menus upon menus, little fragments of content, lots of content without the help of white space to break it up.

Many home pages are guilty of this sin because they want you to know how great their company really is and all the stuff they do. When designing your website treat your home page as the preview, the hub from which to send your visitors further into your site. Remember to decide on a purpose for every page on your site and if you don’t have a clear objective, why is it there?

Envy

The sin of envy is all about wanting what others have. This is likely the most popular sin in a highly competitive marketing world. Time after time we have clients come to us with a direct competitor’s website and say “can you make this for us?” While imitation can indeed be the most sincere form of flattery, often imitation can be construed as copyright infringement.

The other case of envy is when we’re midway through designing a client’s site and they decide after seeing another site to take a complete different direction because they happened to be on another website. This condition of envy has a cure, and that is to have a clear plan and direction of where you would like your website to go. Having this clear vision for your marketing materials helps to keep you on track.

Lust

Ok this one is a stretch for websites just a bit. We’re not going to talk about one of those websites here…

But there are many websites out there that try to be overly inviting to visitors with a beautifully crafted interface and wonderful imagery, and then when you peel back the layers you realize that there’s really no content or substance to the website.

Content is king! You can have all the bells and whistles and beautiful imagery on your site but until you’ve got good and meaningful content below the surface you’ve just got a website that tries too hard to make a lusty impression.

Pride

The sin of excessive love of one’s self. While we all know that you need to be focused on your ideal client so you can educate them as to how you can best solve the problem that they have through your products or services, the temptation is still there to focus inward not really addressing your customers’ issues.

Your website should first and foremost be designed with your ideal client in mind. It should have imagery and a voice that lets them make a decision between you and a competitor without getting in their way.

Sloth

The lazy sin. This is likely the most frequently committed sin on the web today. The inability of your website to stay current and keep up to date information always runs the risk of deterring visitors and losing business.

Another place where sloth creeps in is in the design of your site. Are images blurry or misaligned is there enough whitespace to allow the content to flow cleanly or are you just content to slap on the content and move on?

Wrath

The sin of anger. The web is a great place to be able to voice your opinion but it’s generally a good practice to sugar coat your scathing rebukes as they will follow you around like body odor.

When a visitor experiences your site are you too pushy? Are you looking for the hard-sell (the dreaded squeeze page) do you have all sorts of windows popping up trying to get people to sign up for your RSS feed or you newsletter. Then when you send out an email it’s not a newsletter at all, it’s a total spam fest!

Look out for websites with guarantees, they often have the adverse effect in the mind of the consumer causing them to ask “why would I need a guarantee in the first place”? All the sudden the positive guaranteed has brought in the negative thought of dread.

Greed

Does your website continue to want more? Are you biting off more than you can chew? How much to you ask your website’s visitors to commit to before even working with them?

Do people need to register to view your “insider” info? Why not consider giving it away for free, not only does your website give the customer a warm and fuzzy feeling that there is still such thing as free, but also you’re portrayed as someone who will go the extra mile instead of nickel and dime the customer in the future.

The Path to Enlightenment

By stepping back and analyzing the sins committed on your website and practicing pious avoidance your website will be elevated to higher state which transcends over the top – in your face marketing, and will no longer be destined for the fiery inferno which awaits many sinful websites!

We’re not talking about spam emails, the email from the brother of the prince of Ghana or a big sale on Windows 7 upgrades or emails telling you that you can work from home and make millions. Those emails are fairly harmless as they are deleted just as quickly as they arrive in your inbox.

No, today we’re talking once again about phishing emails – emails designed to trick you into clicking on a link or even worse surrendering confidential information about you or your many online accounts.

Phishing emails are the trojan horse of the modern era, and have recently become more and more effective in appearing real and believable to the recipient. Email programs do their best to let you know when an email contains content that is harmful but alas these emails never cease to find their way into your inbox.

Here’s our checklist for identifying these dangerous emails:

• The email sender is not from the same domain as the company claiming to be sending the email.
• There is bad English or broken sentences. Most reputable companies craft effective (proof read) copy so if you notice spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in the content of the email that’s a telling sign that the email may not be legitimate.
• A phising email might include official-looking logos and other identifying information taken directly from a legitimate company’s site, and they might include convincing details about your personal information that scammers found on your social networking pages.
• Phishing emails make claims that convey a sense of urgency, don’t get scared and never rush into a response. “If you don’t respond within 48 hours, your account will be closed.” “Click here to win your prize” “we’ve uncovered a mistake in your account” “immediate action required” “verify your account” are all examples of the persuasive wording used in a phishing email.
• Read all links and email addresses carefully. While a link might look like it is pointing to Microsoft this email is actually pointing to the spam.fm domain and Microsoft.com is a folder within the spamming domain: http://spam.fm/microsoft.com/accounti2se55dsr43e)
• If there is a link is provided in plain text be sure to check where it is pointing as it still may actually point elsewhere. You can determine this by resting not clicking your mouse pointer on the link to reveal the real address in the bottom of the email window.
• If you aren’t associated with a bank that tells you to change your account settings – it’s a phishing email!
• If an attachment is included in a suspicious email never open it.
• If paypal sends you an email and it’s addressed to “dear paypal customer” it’s spam – paypal always sends emails addressed to the account holder directly.
• If you’ve set up social media alert emails (ie Facebook) be careful of the emails that say that “someone has tagged you in a photo.” Verify that the link is accurate before clicking.

Here are a couple examples of these phishing emails to avoid click on the image to view the larger size.

Emails from tax agencies - federal tax agencies will only send you snail mail. Also the url displayed is different from the actual url (see bottom) info panel.

Bad spelling in the title "part" instead of "party" also includes an attachment - never open these!

E-transfers are becoming more common and therefore phishing emails like this are more prevelent as well.

An email from PayPaI ('i' instead of an 'L') also contains an attachment

An email that begins with "dear paypal customer" is fake - paypal uses the name on your account

Never fill in an attached form! Also notice the 'from' email address "news@cnn.com"

If it's not your bank, delete it!

After cutting out the shape of my desk, things were finally starting to take shape. Unfortunately a desk doesn’t work unless it’s standing off the ground and at this point I had no legs to accomplish this – so it was time for another trip to IKEA to purchase some legs and a couple other accessories to complete my new workstation.

I purchased 8 legs and 2 cable storage baskets to help me manage the tangly mess of cables that I can’t stand to look at.

Next it was time to give my desk a finish that would not only bring out the beauty in the wood grain but would also make the desk a little more idiot proof in case I set a glass of water on it. I started with an oil stain that really made the desk come alive with colour. Once that had soaked in for several days I put on 4 coats of a clear finish  (idiot proofing).

The desk after the oil coat.

This part of the construction is also the most excruciating, there are so many questions going around in my head:

“Did I get the height right?”

“What will it look like in my office?”

“Where am I going to put stuff once it’s set up for the best workflow”

All these questions had to wait at least a couple more days as I waited for the finish coats to dry. Luckily I found a nice distraction when I decided to remove the carpet in my office in favour of a new cork floor.

We went to the source flooring to pick out a really nice dark cork board that will make my white maple desk pop. Which led to spending the better part of the weekend flooring my office which now had a complete overhaul.

My new cork floor - I brought in a sample of the desktop which made it easy to choose the darker board.

Now that I had a completely new floor and a desk that was totally finished and sealed against water damage, it was time to bring it to its final resting place in my office.

I attached the legs and cord management baskets from Ikea and the desk couldn’t have fit better in the space it was designed for.

The assembled desk in its the newly floored office.

After spending several hours trying to come up with the proper configuration of cables and the best workflow possible, I think I’m at a point where things are looking good. In the end I likely spent about $450 on my desk which was at least what I would have spent on a store bought solution but you can’t discount the character that this desk already exudes – especially with my monitors set up.

In all, I couldn’t be happier with my new desk and simplified layout in my overhauled office. Now let’s see if I can keep it clean!

The final setup, everything in its place.

I chose to fill out the wall with some frames adding extra interest.

Ready to get to work!

We’re not talking about a trip to the ‘loo but rather the dreaded 404 error page.

Surely in your web travels you’ve come across this odd page that looks nothing like the website you’re on. You check to see if you’re still connected to the internet, and then realize that you’ve come upon a broken link on the website. Now this article isn’t trying to place blame on anyone’s shoulders, maybe you were trying to guess a URL on a site or perhaps (more than likely the case) there was a broken link that just doesn’t work. And now you’re wondering, is this what happens when people search around on my site? Thankfully there’s an opportunity here, and that is to creatively style your 404 error page.

Avoid the generic 404 page at all costs!

For years designers have been fessing up to 404 errors with honest, creativity and a clever dose of whit to make the visitor look past the error they’ve witnessed. As we’ve been working hard at a new website theme this week we though it was time for a revamp of the error page as well.

Our current attempt at 404 honesty.

404 – The marketing opportunity

Since you can get creative and style your own error page, there’s no reason that you can’t continue to captivate visitors on your site by being funny, further showcasing your brand or giving them some options of other places to go.

404 errors in WordPress

Styling your error page in WordPress is pretty simple you just need to have access to the theme directory. Look for the 404.php file and insert anything you want. In general we always like to keep this page contained within the site for easy navigation.

WordPress also has a couple plugins that allow the less code-savvy user to quickly add her own customized page. Here are a few good ones:

1. 404 SEO Plugin

This simple plugin will give you a customized, smart ‘Page Not Found(404)’ error message. It will automatically display links to relevant pages on your site, based on the words in the URL that was not found.

2. 404 Notifier

Detects and notifies you of all the 404 errors that might creep in on the site unknowingly. A good idea if you want to cut down on future errors.

3. Smart 404

This plugin will perform a search of your posts, pages, tags and categories, using keywords from the requested URL and the search term. If there’s a match, it redirects to that matched content instead of showing the 404 error.

5. Dunstan style 404 error page

This plugin makes your 404 error pages more interactive giving the user various options like recent posts, feedback forms etc.

6. Redirection Plugin

This is a great plugin that handles all sorts of errors. Includes 404 error monitoring – captures a log of 404 errors and allows you to easily map these to 301 redirects.

Examples of great 404 pages – for your inspiration

Bright Kite

This page keeps Bright Kite’s branding going which is nice and simple, makes you want to go fly a kite!

CSS-Tricks

Like the idea of the page revealing a little bit of CSS.

Hootsuite

Cool idea with the milk carton. Nice to be provided with a home page link and some explanations for why the visitor might have gotten there. We will take #4 – we like 404 pages!

Urban Outfitters

A very simple error message but one that manages to jive with their brand and language making you realize that you’re still in the Urban Outfitters realm.

Tele2

We have no idea what this says but the image says it all. How can you not have a smile on your face?

Heintz

Our consensus favourite! This one has it all – it’s creative, it furthers the brand, there’s a little bit of humor and an identifiable feeling that everyone has gone through at some point in their life.

What is a Domain?

By definition:  do·main/dōˈmān/noun.

An estate or territory held in legal possession by a person or persons.

In the online world
Your domain is the hub for your company’s online presence.

The Basics

Domains vs. Servers

Many of our clients often get hung up over the difference between domains and servers. Your domain is like your address where your server is like your house. The domain is the location that people need to know to get to your server like a house where your house holds “stuff” such as your website or email and can be open 24/7 to people around the world.

We actually like to think of a domain as a cross between a street address and a phone number, your domain can always be yours. If you move to a different house (server) you change your address but depending on the phone company you can keep your phone number. This is very similar to the way transferring your domain works – you can move to a new server and when you do you just “point” your domain to send people to that new server. You can even do cool things like point your domain to one server for your website stuff and another server for email!

What makes a good domain name?

When choosing a domain for your website you want to consider a number of things when making this important decision. Here are a few characteristics of good domains:

• They are short – the simpler the better almost always wins out!
• They don’t have to be read – can you easily say your domain name (seminars, radio) and have people get to your website?
• They are easy to remember – will people be able to visit your domain 2 hours after you tell them?
• They are easy to spell – will someone make an error when entering your domain after looking at your business card?
• They have a .com extension (country extensions are close second) – people often assume .com so using .net or .org may be problematic.
• They are descriptive – there are sometimes benefits to using long domains and that helps with search engine traffic.
• They are brandable – just ask google.com
• They don’t look weird – avoid multiple words that spell weird stuff (see below) or difficult to spell words.
• They don’t have hyphens or numbers – never, ever use hyphens or numbers if you can help it.

Choose your domain name wisely

Here are some of the greatest mistakes made for innocent enough sounding companies be careful when choosing your domain name!

http://www.speedofart.com  Speed Of Art
http://www.penisland.net    Pen Island
http://www.therapistfinder.com  Therapist Finder – now changed to Counseling California
http://www.molestationnursery.com  Mole Station Nursery – now changed to http://www.molerivernursery.com/
http://www.expertsexchange.com  Experts Exchange

How to find out if your domain name is taken?

To find out if a domain is available you need to do a whois search. One of the best places to go is whois.net

Lately though we’ve been using multi domain search tool from Network Solutions which allows you to do multiple search queries at once and for multiple extensions and quickly see if several domains are taken or available all at once.

Where can I register my domain?

There are many domain registrars out there, you’ve likely heard of GoDaddy and Network Solutions but we like Netfirms the best as they have really good and consistent rates and a simple to use interface without all the upsell that you get from those other companies.

What’s the cost?

Domains can really cost anything – we usually recommend paying between $10 and $20 per year. Be careful of the companies that will charge $2.00 for the first year then charge you $30 the next.

How many domains should I have?

At such a low yearly cost there’s no reason you shouldn’t get several different domains for your company. The important thing is to choose a domain that will act as your primary domain. Once that’s set, there’s really no limit to how many domains you use. Sometimes it’s a good idea to preserve your brand by buying multiple extensions (.net, .org, .com, .ca, .us) of a particular name. Sometimes you might want to purchase a domain because you’re worried that people might make a mistake when typing in your URL (ie if your company is forest.com you might also consider purchasing forrest.com). Another good use of a domain name is to promote some unique product or service that you offer. If your name is “companyxyz.com” and you create widgets you might want to register “thegreatestwidget.com” or “bestwidgetsforyou.com” or something that you can promote to a particular audience and either forward that domain to your main URL or set it to drop in on a special landing page.

Got a question?

Those are just a couple answers to some of the questions our clients ask. What did we miss?