That Web Man

Well I added some more affiliate links as I mentioned earlier and one of them has already produced a $50 referral fee, so that’s paid for the domain name a few times over.

It’s probably still early days yet in terms of search engine positioning, but the site is already producing a number of clicks if not too many actual conversions.

So this evening, I registered two new domain names pointing at the same site: sexynylonwomen.com and women-in-nylon.com. I am hoping this will eventually drive more traffic that way and I am after all only re-investing some of the affiliate income into the site.

What I wanted to do was have both new domains mirror the existing site, but I have set my WordPress installation up to serve pages as the main domain name so they actually end up being effectively redirected. This is a pity as I really wanted the content to be available (and hence listed) as being from three sites - which is a tad naughty in terms of some search engine rules. Never mind though: at least it makes them ‘legal’ in terms of those guidelines.

The alternative was to set up two new WordPress installations and syndicate the main site to the two new sites, but this would have meant syndicating syndicated feeds which could then have its own repercussions. And of course it would mean two additional sites to update when there are new WordPress software releases.

Talking of domain names, one of the best things about my US-based hosts and the .coms I can register with them is the speed with which I can go from ideas to sites.

I use DreamHost in the States. Even on their cheapest hosting plans, they allow me to register multiple domain names and host multiple sites. Through my control panel, I simply register the domain(s), set up the site hosting and then to make things even easier, have them install WordPress with a new MySQL database. I did this with this site yesterday: start to finish was less than an hour. I also did this with a client web site a few weeks ago: start to finish including a fancy photo lightbox and site banner image was a few hours.

The ‘problem’ comes with .co.uk domain names that take hours to get registered (and also cannot be registered ‘anonymously’ or by proxy) and even longer to get propagated across the Internet.

So yes, I thoroughly recommend DreamHost and all the features that come with it:

Oh and if you click that image and proceed to set up a new account, you can have $50 off a year’s hosting fee if you quote the promo code “THATWEBMAN”.

Instant web presence for anyone. It’s the future and it’s here now.

This morning I received an e-mail from my hosting partners telling me the client’s domain names had been renewed and that they’d had a call directly from the non-paying client demanding to know when it would be back up.

By 10.00am, the .com had been renewed and the site was serving up the hosted pages again - the .co.uk had never stopped doing so.

I had also received an e-mail from the client which as a postscript asked if the cheque had arrived. Needless to say, it hasn’t…

One thing that surprised me when I chose to set up this blog was the availability of both the .com domain name for such generic terms. thatwebguy.com had already been taken, as had thatwebdesigner.com but I could have had thatwebdesignerbloke.com if I’d wanted it.

Mind you, I was lucky enough to get a couple of released early domain names before: blogged-in.com and blogged-on.com.