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To install the domain search bookmarklet you just have to drag the following link to your bookmarks bar:
You should also visit our new domain tools overview page where we've listed all the other iWantMyName gadgets:
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.
We help you to configure custom domains for the following services from your iWantMyName account:
1. Build websites online
2. Make a Flash website
3. Start your own blog
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.
Now you can not only publish status updates for Twitter or Facebook in a cool way but also register very unique domain names. So why not astonish your friends with an upside down domain of your first name? Our fun domain name generator FlipMyName makes this possible. Just enter your name and you'll be presented with a flipped version.
It's fun for sharing links on Twitter, Facebook or in your email and forum footer. You could also create your own URL shortener with it. The technology behind this is around for years by the way. Domains are registered as IDNs (Internationalised Domain Names) and are accessible by any modern browser.
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:
Other resources
If you don't have a short domain you should check out our list of ultra short and brandable domain names.



More examples and inspiration can be found at Intercyclopedia.
