Website help

[MH1979]

Can anyone give me some advice about domain names?

I need a website for a small business project I'm helping a friend with and I'm thinking of using 1&1. Is there anything we need to know before we choose a domain name? Looking on here http://www.1and1.com/domaincheck it says there are 700 new extensions available, is that the .com part? If so, is it better to have one of the lesser know extensions and your first choice of name, or is it best to stick with .com and have hyphens/different spellings etc?

Thanks

[newtogolf]

1&1 is okay if you're going to create a basic website but if you are planning on doing anything with heavy storage or processing requirements it's not going to be sufficient.  An alternative to 1&1 is "web.com", the sponsor of the Web.com Tour - just to keep it golf related.

As for domain names, imo it's a trade off.  People still tend to gravitate towards .com but .net is gaining in use so I'd try to stick with those two unless you would really have to obfuscate the prefix with -'s or different/incorrect spelling.  If you're going to use .net or a different suffix you'll want to make sure that the .com of your domain isn't a competitor or you could end up sending your customers to your competitors website accidently.

[Braivo]

Try to stick with .com, .net, or .org if you can.  People tend to forget the name of a website pretty easily, and having to remember something like .info as well just makes it that much harder.  I've been building a site lately, if you need any more tips let me know.

[MH1979]

Great, thanks for that.

[18rounds]

I agree with the advice you got here with one caveat. I think in the future it will matter less and less which top level domain (.com, .net, etc) you have. They are releasing more and more domains so soon it will not be as common to have .com or .net Also, when building a site you may want to consider useing Wordpress. Just my .02. Free advice tends to be worth what you pay for it. :)

[trickyputt]

Make it as short as possible. Remember you are asking people to type it in and thats not fun on long proud names.