You are NOT stuck with a .com for a website name

When many of us think of websites , we have been conditioned to think of it as .com  and not realize that there are a host of other opportunities, currently available, with more on the way..

The .com part is called a domain suffix. Others you may be familiar with include .gov (for US federal, state and local governmental bodies) or .edu (for schools, usually colleges, but even elementary school systems, such as cps.edu).  There are 22 of those top-level domain suffixes, and they exist alongside 250 country-level domains, such as .ca for Canada or .jp for Japan.

Another reason to consider something OTHER than a .com - the number of websites with that suffix. Here are the most popular(according to the above article, from WhoIs):
.com = 103.9 million (as of June 27, 2012)
.net =     14.8 million
.org =     10.0 million
  .us =       1.8 million

Looking at those numbers, if you've tried to register a domain name, you may be stuck with someone only insiders might remember, and not easy for outsiders (such as prospective customers or visitors) to remember.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which regulates the domain suffixes, is opening up the extensions, with many more possibilities. Some would be exclusively for a corporation, such as .apple for (of course) Apple Computers, or .amazon for Amazon.com.

But others would be opened up for the general public. For example 2 organizations are vying for the use of .church, which they would re-sell to the public. So Uptown Baptist Church could go from www.UptownBaptistChurch.org to the easier-to-remember www.Uptown.church (and in the process drop the "Baptist" if they desired to not emphasize that part of their name).

The website rt.com has an excellent article which explains the possible extensions that have been applied for.
 There are 2000 suffixes that have been applied for, with each application costing over $185,000.

Ryan Faughnder of Tribune Newspapers wrote an excellent article regarding the status of these domain extension at the end of June. It is found here --> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-internet-overseers-20120628,0,5690285.story 

We at Do-Gooder Consulting want to keep things simple, so our web site is simply do.gooder.us 
Because we know that confuses people, we will advertise the web site as www.do-gooder.us , as people also (falsely) equate all website names as starting with www.




Please contact us at Do-Gooder Consulting, and we can help your organization get set up with a web domain name that fits your needs and resources.

Even if you are not quite ready for a website, contact us so we can help you be on the cutting edge when domains become available, such as a possible .church suffix.

This article is copyright 2012 by Do-Gooder Consulting. Please contact us if you would like to reproduce it on your blog or newspaper.