| Get A Domain (October 1999) Archived at Pineapplesoft |  | |||
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The Pineapplesoft Link newsletter covered a wide range of technical topics, see the archived issues. The newsletter was first emailed in 1998. In 2001 Benoît discontinued it in favour of professional writing for magazines. The “Get A Domain (October 1999)” page was archived in 2003 to preserve the original content of January 1999. | ||||
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Welcome to the 22nd issue of Pineapplesoft Link! This issue discusses domain names and email. Get A Domain If you interested in XML, don't miss the "self-promotion department" at the bottom of this newsletter. There are two great XML-related announcements. You might have heard about problems with some of free webmail (web-based email) services, like Hotmail: security failures, service unavailable, etc. If you are a Hotmail user, then you might have suffered first hand. In this newsletter, I'm suggesting that some webmail users should consider registering their own domain. Obviously this solution is not for everybody but read on and you will find that owning a domain is both simpler and cheaper than you might think. Free Email Free email, and, in particular, webmail are very popular. They are popular with employees who are increasingly concerned about the privacy of their professional email address. Indeed more companies are tapping their employees email. They are also popular with students, and those of us who frequently change email addresses either because we change jobs or change ISP. In this respect, free emails are marketed as so-called lifetime email addresses. As the subscription list for this newsletter illustrates, many people have turned to webmail as their primary email address. Free emails however have one major problem: you are stuck with the free email provider. It may not look like a big deal if you consider it's free but it becomes a big deal if you grow dependant on the address and the free provider fails to deliver. As recent Hotmail problems illustrate, a service can go from good to bad in a matter of months. Unfortunately if you depend on the service, for example because you printed the address on your business cards, than you are stuck with it. That's why I'm advocating that, if email is important to you, you take control. It is now easy and inexpensive to own a domain name. A domain name is the part after the @ in email address. For example, in the address listmaster.nospam@pineapplesoft.com [please note that this address is not valid] the domain name is pineapplesoft.com. As the owner of your own domain, you can create any email addresses you like. You are in control. You don't have to be a company to register a domain, you can register a domain with your name (I own the domain marchal.com for example) so you can register a domain for your family. A Domain Doesn't Have to be Expensive Until recently owning a domain was expensive. You needed a hosting service provider. The provider would charge a monthly fee for the service. Today however there are free alternatives for almost all services. Hey, you may think, what do I gain? Am I not going from a free provider to another free provider? The difference is that your address is yours. If you are unhappy with the free provider, you can move to another free provider and still retain your address. However owning a domain name is not entirely free. You have to pay a yearly fee to the registration authority. For example, Internic, the registration authority for .com, .net and .org charges $35 per year per domain. Unfortunately there is no free substitute for the registration fee. Beware of solutions where you would not pay the registration fee for your domain! If you don't pay, you probably don't own the domain. Before you go back to Hotmail, compare $35 with the cost of printing new business cards. Even for personal usage it makes sense. You can have more than one address per domain so it is possible to share the costs with friends or your family. Hey, there's a business there: register your name and resell lifetime email address to your family. Finally consider the cachet of calling yourself john@smith.com instead of john2343@hotmail.com. A Webmail For Your Domain To obtain a free webmail with your own domain, you first need to obtain a free mailbox. You can use your company mailbox or you can register for a free mailbox with http://www.softhome.net. Next you need to register your domain and create one or more email addresses. This is easy with http://www.mydomain.com. The service is very easy to use and, best of all, it's free. The addresses are forwarding addresses, meaning mail sent to your address is forwarded to the mailbox of your choice (in this case, your free mailbox). Finally you must register with http://www.mailstartplus.com. This service is a free webmail. Unlike other webmail services, it lets you specify that your return address is on your domain. Use the address you created on your domain. Conclusion As you can see, owning your address is inexpensive, not too difficult and it can be fun! Self-promotion department I am currently writing my first book. Entitled "XML by Example", it will be published in late 1999 by Que. As the name implies, the topic is XML. As you can imagine, I am very excited with this development! While we are on the topic of XML, Netscape ViewSource published "Servlet Programming for Teams: How Java Programmers and HTML Designers Can Collaborate Using XML " at http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/index_frame.html?content=marchal_xml.htm. The article is proving very popular and I invite you to check it! About Pineapplesoft Link Pineapplesoft Link is a free email magazine. Each month, it discusses technologies, trends and facts of interest to web developers. The information and design of this issue of Pineapplesoft Link are owned by Benoit Marchal and Pineapplesoft. Permission to copy or forward it is hereby granted provided it is prefaced with the words: "As appeared in Pineapplesoft Link - http://www.pineapplesoft.com." Editor: Benoit Marchal Acknowledgments: thanks to Sean McLoughlin MBA for helping me with this issue. Back issues are available at http://www.psol.be/old/1/newsletter/. Although the editor and the publisher have used reasonable endeavors to ensure accuracy of the contents, they assume no responsibility for any error or omission that may appear in the document. Last update: January 1999. |