Greetings and welcome to the March issue of ZooNews, the monthly newsletter from Montreal Web site design company Zoonini Web Services.

This month I'd like to highlight some real-world domain-name disasters and delights, from the obvious to the obscure!

DO be extra-careful to properly spell your desired domain name when first registering it. A friend of mine recently realized to her horror that the perfect domain name she'd registered a few months ago was actually missing several key letters! Back to the drawing board...

DON'T pick a domain name with more than one or two hyphens in it. Not only do they make it harder to give out your domain name verbally (on the phone, at a networking meeting, etc.) multiple hyphens are starting to become a ranking "downgrade" factor for search engines, due to low-quality sites with charming domains like diet-pills-weight-loss-ephedrine-lose-weight-now-phentermine.com.

DO register more than one domain name and point them all to your main site. For example, if you have a company name in more than one language, you may want to register a domain in each language for use in promotional materials and business cards in each tongue. DON'T, however, try to get all those different domain names listed in search directories and engines; only submit your main domain, lest you be banned or downgraded for perceived spamming.

DON'T let your domain name expire, even if you aren't sure you still want to keep it. True story: a client asked me to register her own name as a domain while she geared up to build a new Web site. Nearly a year went by and her domain name was coming up for renewal. I advised the client of this, but she told me that she'd decided a Web site was no longer a priority for her business, and that I should let the domain name go. I did as instructed and the domain expired. Four months later, she informed me that she'd changed her mind about the site and could I please renew her domain. Too late! Her name had already been snapped up by a domain "squatter" in Australia. I'm sure the fellow would have been glad to sell it back to her... at a hefty premium, of course.

DO choose a domain name that's easy to remember, easy to pronounce, and easy to spell. If you pick a clever, play-on-words domain name, keep in mind that it may actually work against you if it's hard to remember exactly how it's written out.

DON'T fall for domain-name scams by unscrupulous opportunists. My husband recently received a very official-looking printed domain renewal notice in our business mailbox from an outfit called the Domain Registry of Canada. Published in red and black, with a vaguely governmental feel, the notice included a detachable payment stub, complete with return envelope to allow easy renewal of the domain name by credit-card or cheque. What's wrong with this picture? For one thing the "Domain Registry of Canada" is not his current domain registrar! They simply found his domain registration details on the Web and sent an unsolicited notice – which they are very careful not to call an invoice. Oh, and of course their renewal prices happen to be three times the industry average!

DO make sure you won't get hit with a "transfer-away" penalty if you decide to switch domain registrars. Some companies hide this fee in their fine print – and it could be a nasty surprise if you're not happy with their service and want to leave later.

DON'T start a domain name with a digit, like 4kids.com. Many Web-hosting systems cannot handle numbers at the beginning of the domain name. If you really don't want to spell out the number, verify with your Web-hosting company before registering the domain so that it won't be a problem.

DO register common misspellings of your domain name and point them to your primary domain. For example, people sometimes mistype my client's main domain avenueroadartsschool.com, forgetting the second "s." To make sure those potential clients still get to the site, we registered a second domain with a single "s" – avenueroadartschool.com – and pointed it to the main site.

TLD / top-level domain – the TLD is the part of your domain name that comes after the last dot, for example .com or .ca. When choosing a domain name, you have a choice of top-level domains. Make sure you pick the one that best fits your organization's identity. For example, non-profits commonly use .org, Canadian companies that focus exclusively on the Canuck market often go with .ca, and Internet-related companies have traditionally opted for .net. Keep in mind that some of the newer TLDs may not be as well-liked by spam filters as the more established ones. For example, the .biz TLD, introduced in 2001, may contribute to a message's spam score if a .biz email address is in the "From" field.

Got a technology term you'd like demystified in ZooNews? Send it to questions@zoonini.com.

We are delighted to announce that our top-to-bottom site remake for Professional Organizers in Canada has launched. Developed in collaboration with programming partner Gabrielle Zacek of Cresedo Tec, our custom-built, database-driven site features robust content-management tools that benefit both members and the association's volunteer staff. Highlights include an event calendar, online course registration and membership signup, an online store, discussion forum and Find-an-Organizer directory. Via the administrative back-end, POC volunteers can manage their member database, change text or add pictures to the site, add or remove chapters, edit items in the shop and events in the calendar, send out newsletters to the membership, manage automated email messages, and a lot more. The new site has already garnered rave reviews from POC members, who have described it as "beautiful," "impressive," and "amazing."

As companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo cave in to the Chinese government's demands to censor information coming into that communist state, I was intrigued to read about a clever grassroots strategy designed to get contraband news across the technological battle-lines. Fans of Worlds of Warcraft – an intricate fantasy-themed video game involving thousands of players simultaneously playing around the world – have threatened to move their play to the Chinese gamers' server and share censored information with the Chinese players there. While the video-game's maker could theoretically block this plot, it would cost them a lot of money, which is the point.

We will be taking part in Montreal's annual YES Entrepreneurship Conference on March 25 – hope to see some of you there!

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner