Recently in Custom domains Category

You can now even add more cool apps and services to your domains from your iWantMyName dashboard. Here are the latest additions to our domain application directory which enables you to easily apply DNS settings to your domain in one single click:

Blogetery — lets you start your own Wordpress blog for free which makes it the perfect service for starting out with the world's most popular open-source blogging software. Blogetery offers custom domain functionality at no extra cost.

Cargo — The Cargo content management system (CMS) allows you to easily publish a website with all your creative content. You can add image slideshows, embed video and audio files and have full control over the look and feel of your site.

cloudControl — offers a higly scalable hosting stack for creating, managing and scaling your web applications. It currently supports PHP (Java, Python and Ruby following shortly) with database support for MySQL and MongoDB.

Rackspace Email — offers reliable email hosting for your business or organization. It works on your desktop (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird), on the web (Webmail) and on any internet-enabled mobile device (e.g. iPhone, BlackBerry or Android).

ShortSwitch — hosted URL shortening service that allows you to use your own custom domain for sharing links. It includes full API access for custom integration, brandable interstitial pages and additional features such as QR codes and link analytics.

Last week Six Apart announced the shutdown of their free Vox.com blog service. One shortcoming of the system was the inability to use a custom domain name for a blog which means that users have no other choice than changing their web address should they decide to move to another service such as Six Apart's own TypePad, newcomer Posterous or Wordpress.com.

This shows again the importance of having control over your web address with a custom domain name. Similar to phone numbers, domains can be transferred between providers (registrars) and more importantly you can point them to any service of your liking.

So if you are a Vox.com user, before migrating your blog to another service you should think of buying your own domain name first.

Related articles:

• 5 Personal Domain Extensions Other Than .COM
• Your Usernames Do Not Belong To You
• 20 Website Hosting Alternatives To Your Geocities Page

Useful tip on the bit.ly blog about how to use your own custom short domain for link sharing via the Twitter Tweet Button in conjunction with bit.ly Pro:

For smaller publishers who cannot cache links on their backend, we are now providing a simple JavaScript wrapper for sharing bit.ly links using the Twitter Tweet Button:

<script src="http://api.bit.ly/v3/twitter_tweet_button.js?login=bitlyapidemo&apiKey=R_0da49e0a9118ff35f52f629d2d71bf07" type="text/javascript"></script>
<div>
<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button">Tweet</a>
</div>

Be sure to use your bit.ly login and API Key (which you can always find at http://www.bit.ly/a/your_api_key) with the code above.

This implementation simply shortens the page URL and then displays the Twitter Tweet Button in its standard fashion. All Tweet Button functionality is maintained. And, since our JavaScript wrapper uses your bit.ly login and API Key, it will automatically return custom bit.ly short domains for Pro and Enterprise users.

Need a short domain name for your own URL shortener? These domain extensions allow 2-letter domain registration.

Two of the services recommended in our web application directory offer some valuable insights on how using your own domain name, instead of a sub-domain, can boost your website traffic and / or increase sales. But this is not the only advantage. With a custom domain you also have ownership and control over your online identity so that if necessary you could move from one service to another, whilst retaining your branding. On top of that, you can even change your domain name provider and take your web address with you similar to switching your number between mobile phone companies.

Here is what hosted e-commerce solution Shopify and social network hosting service grou.ps are saying about using custom domains:

"Choose a good domain name for your store. Having your own domain rather than using the subdomain supplied with your store adds credibility and professionalism. Choosing a good name can also increase visitors to your store. When I registered DrChristophersHerbs.com I saw an increase in sales due to the keyword density of the name itself. In fact, 66.74% of my traffic comes from search engines, most of them searching for "dr christophers herbs" which corresponds with my domain name. - Addison Kirk of DrChristophersHerbs.com" - via the Shopify blog

"Fact: our custom domain users generate 4x more traffic than our users who are use the grou.ps domain name." - via @grou_ps Twitter

So if you are serious about your online presence, it clearly makes sense to invest in your own web address.

Droplr is a little Mac application that runs in your menubar and can be used for uploading, hosting and sharing files with your favourite Twitter client or other apps. What we really like with Droplr is the custom domain option. Simply enter your own short domain name into their web application, change the DNS A record settings and all links to your hosted files will contain your branded URL immediately.

It's best to see it in action so watch the demo video below and see how easy Droplr works with Twitter or email:

The service is currently in private beta but we could score some invites for you which will be raffled among all commenters to this blog post (don't forget to leave your email address).

Yahoo's Geocities service is about to close in 2 months and it's getting time to look for an alternative, if you haven't already done it. Today we'd like to recommend both some free and paid services for hosting your own website.

But let's start with one basic thing first and that's your own domain name. A domain should be the foundation for every website because, compared to an internet address like geocities.com/yourwebsite, you have full ownership and control over it. This gives you the advantage of being able to switch to another website hosting service if you become dissatisfied with features, price or customer support.

By seperating the three elements website hosting, email and domain registration you can even further minimise the risk of being caught in another Geocities-like incident. In such a case you simply have to point your domain name to a new hosting service whilst still retaining the same overall branding and email address. Our Domains For Apps offering can help you to achieve this 3-way setup.

The following 20 services make building a website, blog or community easy. It's worth to take your time and compare their features and prices to find the tool that's best suited for you.

Hosted Website Services For Your Own Domain

We help you to configure custom domains for the following services from your iWantMyName account:

1. Build websites online

• Google Sites - Create free websites and wikis. Google Sites is part of the Google Apps Suite which also lets you use free email on your domain with Gmail.
• MobileMe - Websites are built with Apple's iWeb and can be easily uploaded to MobileMe. You can choose from a variety of themes and also create a blog using iWeb.
  
• Squarespace - Popular online website builder service. Make websites, a blog or portfolio. Also offers an iPhone app.
  
• Weebly - Drag and Drop sitebuilder to publish text, videos, pictures, maps, etc. Additional blogging features included.
  
• Yola - Create a site for small businesses, groups, non-profits or personal use with Yola's intuitive online editor.
• Ning - Build a social network with members. They can have their own profile page, add photos and videos or write a blog. Available in 18 languages.

2. Make a Flash website

• Moonfruit - Easily build Flash sites using the Moonfruit sitemaker tool with WYSIWYG features and social network integration for Twitter & Facebook.
• Wix - Professional Flash website editor. Choose from hundreds of free Flash templates, no technical skills required.
  

3. Start your own blog

• Blogger - Free blog service to post articles, thoughts, photos and videos. Blogger just celebrated its 10th birthday and is available in more than 40 languages.
• Posterous - The newcomer. Just send an email to Posterous which is turned into a blog post and automatically shared to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more.
  
• Soup.io - Free tumblelog services to share links, quotes, video, audio, files etc. Soup.io is completely customisable and perfect for a mini-blog or lifestream.
  
• Tumblr - Tumblr is another easy way to blog that lets you use a custom domain. Share your online life from your browser, iPhone, desktop or email.
• Typepad - Professional blog hosting for businesses, journalists and writers from renowned Six Apart.

Other Website Builders With Custom Domain Option

• Jimdo - Another comprehensive and easy to use website creator. Jimdo also offers a special import feature for all Geocities customers.
• Wordpress.com - Hosted version of the popular Wordpress blogging software. Many free templates are available for personal and business websites.
  
• Viviti - Build a unique website for small businesses, bloggers and web designers. No code and no hassle. That's how we like it.
  
• SnapPages - Online website creation tool for the rest of us with drag-and-drop simplicity. Looks very easy and Apple-like.
• Tank - Clean and simple webpage creator. It is aimed at people who want beautiful sites that just work. Build anything, anywhere, anytime.
• Webstarts - Create a professional online presence. Add Flash files, slideshows, music, images, widgets, ecommerce tools and more.
  
• Webs - Webpage creator for personal sites, groups and businesses. Offers a variety of layous and also has built-in community features such as forums and an event organiser.

We hope you enjoyed this article. If you don't have a domain yet you should check out our domain search and register your web address now.

The sudden shutdown of popular URL shortener tr.im was already covered by the main tech blogs so we won't go into further details on the business side. In short the main problem resulting from this are the broken links someday and there's only one solution how you can prevent this in the future: run your own URL shortener.

Again, it all comes down to owning your namespace as discussed earlier with Facebook's username landrush. You are only able to fully control what's happening with your links if you own the domain name and run your own URL shortener on it. Anybody who's considering Twitter as an important part of their business or personal brand should start thinking about customising their short URLs now (also see our domain hack examples how they are used to create short links).

We have compiled a list of hosted services, scripts and plugins that make running your custom URL shortener possible:

Hosted URL shortening services with custom domain

• awe.sm - A custom URL shortener with API. detailed analytics, uptime guarantee and SLAs. According to their website you can take your data with you anytime.
• Tinyarro.ws - Use a custom domain with Tinyarro.ws' tiny links service. As their own service uses the ➡.ws domain you should also be able to use IDNs.
  
• budurl - The budurl Enterprise edition offer the possibility to use your own domain. Their dashboard provides extensive analytics and real-time stats.
  
• XR.COM - This free service is a basic URL shortening tool. If you don't need analytics and just want to shorten links XR.COM might be the right choice.
  
• Google Short Links - Google runs a URL shortener as part of Google Apps For Your Domain. It's a Labs feature but can simply be added to your dashboard.
  
• Peashoot - Manage social media campaigns with your own short URLs. If you want to grow your audience and haven't yet heard of Peashoot you've missed a great app.
• su.pr - StumbleUpon's own URL shortener drives traffic to your site can be used with a custom domain too. You need to install a small script or use Wordpress though.

Run a URL shortener on your own machine

• YOURLS PHP script - Small set of script to shorten links using a classic PHP and MySQL setup. Also offers an API and a Wordpress plugin.
  
• Short URL Wordpress Plugin - Create short URLs with this Wordpress plugin. Offers basic analytics and requires Wordpress 2.5 or higher.
  
• Movable Type script - Paul Roub's script to create a self-hosted URL shortener for the Movable Type blog software. You need some technical knowledge for this.
  

Other resources

If you don't have a short domain you should check out our list of ultra short and brandable domain names.

We wish the Moonfruit team all the best for their 10th birthday. They're not only great guys (we met them at ICANN Sydney last week) but they currently also give you the chance to win 10 new release MacBook Pro's (!) during a birthday celebration.

That's why we've also added Moonfruit to our Domains for Apps offering. If you've registered a domain with us and want to connect it to a Moonfruit site this can be easily done from your iWantMyName dashboard now.