Use your Domain to Dominate

Peo­ple sel­dom use the full poten­tial of their domain name.

Using your domain name as a web address for your web­site or blog is just one of the things that you can do. The other thing is to use it for a per­son­alised email address. But you can also use your domain name to cre­ate a trail of pres­ence over the inter­net by using it to access var­i­ous ser­vices that you use.

Lets assume you have a domain name such as yourname.com (this could also be your-punch-line.whatever). Here is all that you can do with it -

1. Host your web­site or blog. (you will need to have web host­ing space for this)

2. Use Domain For­ward­ing to redi­rect your domain name to your blog at Blogspot.com or WordPress.com (or any free blog host­ing services)

3. You can cre­ate Sub-domains. Most reg­is­trars allow you to make unlim­ited sub­do­mains for free. (Make sure you check this before choos­ing a reg­is­trar. Always use a reputed, trans­par­ent reg­is­trar to avoid lock-ins or addi­tional costs)

4. You can use Sub-domains in the fol­low­ing ways -

4.1. Make a sub-domain like blog.yourname.com and for­ward it to your free blog at blogspot.com or wordpress.com

4.2. If you have another blog you can set that up too, like, blog2.yourname.com or whatever-its-called.yourname.com

4.3. Have facebook.yourname.com for­ward to your Face­book pro­file (For exam­ple: facebook.meethil.com will take you to my Face­book pro­file page)

4.4. Have linkedin.yourname.com for­ward to your LinkedIn pro­file (For exam­ple: linkedin.meethil.com will take you to my Linkedin pro­file page)

4.5. Have twitter.yourname.com for­ward to your Twit­ter page (For exam­ple: twitter.meethil.com will take you to my Twit­ter page)

4.6. Have flickr.yourname.com for­ward to your flickr col­lec­tion (or set or gallery, whichever you want)

4.7. Basi­cally, once set up, all your social media, net­work­ing and photo shar­ing web­sites can be accessed this way.

4.8. The advan­tage of doing this is – tomor­row for some rea­son if you change your blog address or some account id, you just have to change the for­ward­ing URL in your domains con­trol panel and the URL you dis­trib­uted before still works.

5. Use email on your domain. Thanks to Gmail you no longer have to stick to a fea­ture starved web­mail or machine depen­dent pop-mail client when you want to use email@yourname.com. Most hosts allow you to setup unlim­ited (or at least more than you would require) POP mail accounts (though these can be lim­ited to 1 GB or 2 GB Inboxes). But using Gmail you can use you@yourdomain.com to send and receive email from within your cur­rent or new Gmail account while using all the Gmail features.

Advan­tages of using Gmail on your domain:

1. Use the ben­e­fits of web mail
2. Use all Gmail fea­tures
3. Col­lect email from mul­ti­ple POP accounts in one inbox
4. Send and receive emails using any of the POP email ids you setup

To get per­son­alised tips on how you can use a domain name feel free to get in touch with me. You can send in your queries by com­ment­ing to this post or email me.

Thanks for reading.