Cyber Name

Arrrgh!  I never knew that there were so many different places in cyber space that will host domain names, web sites, and blogs!

We spent ALL DAY yesterday conducting research on how to get a domain name and build a web site that has e-commerce capabilities.  We looked at the different service providers and reviews and top 10 lists and reviews then new providers then more reviews...We ended the day overwhelmed with information.

Here's the funny thing, though.  When we first decided on a name (finally!) we checked everywhere we could think of to be sure that Soap Lily was not already being used.  We couldn't find it.  So we started this blog using the name.  As we were conducting our research yesterday, we were on a couple of domain hosts' sites and typed in soaplily to make sure we could get it should we decide to go that route.  When we typed it in there, we found that someone must own it.  It isn't being used for a Website, but we could purchase the name through an auction.

What?!

I think some little spiderbots are crawling around the Web, and when they see someone type in a new name they buy it up so that person has to shell out cash for his or her own idea.  Does that sound too conspiratorial?

We're still just too small to shell out over $200 for a domain name (it's okay and I won't be offended if you want to go ahead and infer that by "small" I really mean "broke"), but I'm afraid if we don't get something that is close to the name we want, we'll end up with nothing that even resembles soaplily.  With that in mind, I paused here, mid-paragraph, went over to godaddy.com., and just registered and parked a domain name that we can live with:  soap-lily.com.  Sure we wanted it without the hyphen, but it's better than something like "the1soap-lilysoap.com".

Why godaddy?  Because, after having read about namescheap, 1&1, iPage, bluehost, fatcow, Webgator, Gandi, and all of the others, a good friend who is an expert told me to to go with godaddy.  That was enough for me.

At any rate, we have the name now should we decide to build a Web page.  We just have to remember to renew the registration in a year.  Anyone who knows us probably started laughing as soon as they read the word "remember."