A Piece of Empty Space

So, why 'own' your own domain name? After all, these days you can get almost any service from the net without one. You can even have your own web page without one. That is even more true today than before.

But there are some real, practical reasons why you might want to have one... and maybe some that aren't as practical. I'll go into a few of them tonight.

But before that, bear this in mind. It's easy, and it's cheap. I got the start of this one up done in a day, and that included fixing two issues. Usually it would take you just an hour or two. And it costs me, all told, about 20 dollars. So, no super geeks needed.

The most practical use for your own domain is email. Sure, these days free email services with tons of features are everywhere. But with your own domain, you gain some advantages. The first one you notice is control. You can pick any name you want. There will be no need to come up with johnsmith56846 or some other typographical nightmare. When you use a popular service, you are literally compeating for a good name with millions of other people. With your own, you can literally own your own name again. And you also have a stronger level of control on how your email operates. Hey, it's yours, right? This is great if you have a family. You'll feel better about your kids having email when you can access the control panel.

There is a less practial, though no less real advantage. Sometimes some people make judgments based on where you get your service. It's silly, but it happens. Having aol.com at the end of your address seems to trigger this more often than most, and back when google mail was still in beta and hard to get, my gmail.com had a slight positive one. With your own, you avoid this.

And let's admit the best advantage... it's cool. Who needs AOL or MSN, anyway?

Now, what good is a domain name if you don't have a page? When you have a page on some service, your site name always gets second billing, and this can lead to a very hard to type and remember URL, filled with periods, slashes and numbers. Who needs that? Can you even figure out how to say it? Me, I just say "Yeah, it's Maximumwords.com... check it out sometime. I've got two whole posts up so far!"

Oh, and then there are those practical things, like more control of what you have on your page and how it works, and stuff like that. The little things. Some services tend to limit stuff like this. It's much better to have control of your site, rather than just having limited access to someone else's.

And then there is what is likely the least practial, but I think the most important, reason. If you have been just a user of the net, getting news from cnn.com and search from google.com, I think you are missing a key part of what the net is. Certianly, the utility that the net offers is amazing. You can pay bills, get the local news from small town in a Pacific island and more. The power of the net is that anyone, not just big companies, can use it. Unlike TV, or newspapers, or book publishing, the net is open. I can spend 50 bucks and put up a site that looks just as good as one CNN has. Now, to do so, you still have to be creative and put some work in.

But the dividing line is that... not having a printing press, or owning a TV station. And better yet, after you put up your first web page, and load it up on your favorite browser, the next time you are at CNN.com, you can say "Ehh... not bad. But I could do that."