OODA Strategies» multiple domain http://oodastrategies.com Build a web presence, not just a website Sat, 21 May 2011 04:53:15 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 How to take advantage of your domain identity? http://oodastrategies.com/2008/08/01/how-to-take-advantage-of-your-domain-identity/ http://oodastrategies.com/2008/08/01/how-to-take-advantage-of-your-domain-identity/#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:32:34 +0000 admin http://opensourceactivism.blogivists.com/?p=44 I would like to give you some things to think about with your web presence. The first thing is to determine your web address or domain name. The importance of this can not be underestimated in this Internet connected world. The name should be easy to remember and it should be available as a domain name. In addition, make sure the .com, .net. and the .org at a minimum are available. You should consider the .info and .name as well if this is for a business or a political campaign. Your goal is to make a memorable domain. Buying multiple extensions helps protect your domain identity.

Acronyms can be used as well, but again, make sure the full domain is available. One of the main reasons this is important is that your political adversaries will buy the domain name if you don’t. They will then use this to circumvent and distort your message and efforts by stealing your visitors.

The next step is to make use of your entire domain identity. You do this by pointing each extension to your main site URL. You can do this with the following steps.

  1. Choose which extension will be your main URL. Most will be the .com extension unless you are an organization, then choose .org. this example use .com as the main url
  2. Park the secondary extensions on top of you main domain. This is done via your hosting company.
  3. .htaccess specifics (Save a copy of your .htaccess file before making any changes just in case something goes wrong
    • WordPress Blog Example (assuming name permalinks being used)

      • Make all links remove the www

        RewriteCond !^www\.yourdomain\.com !^yourdomain\.com

      • Make all .org extensions become .com

        RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.org !^yourdomain\.com

      • Make all .net extensions become .com

        RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.net !^yourdomain\.com

      • Repeat for all other extensions
    • Mediawiki Example (assuming name permalinks being used)
      • Make all links remove the www

        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomain\.com

      • Make all .org extensions become .com

        RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.org !^yourdomain\.com

      • Make all .net extensions become .com

        RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.net !^yourdomain\.com

      • Repeat for all other extensions

There are couple of benefits to following these steps besides protecting your domain identity. The first is that it allows people who forget which domain extension to use to still get to your site. Second, all the different extensions now get counted as 1 by Google and other search engines.

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