Master of My Own Domain

Posted on December 12, 2004    Posted by John Scalzi      8 Comments

I’ve been stocking up on domains. Clearly, I own Scalzi.com. But over the years I’ve owned several others, and as my hosting service charges a mere $6 a year to maintain domain names (a vast improvement over the $35 a year I’d been paying previous), I decided to do a little shopping. Forthwith, these are the domains I now own:

Scalzi.com — Duh. However, Scalzi.net and Scalzi.org are not owned by me, they’re owned by someone named Danielle Scalzi, who’s had them for three years now and has not done anything with them. Maybe I’ll ask her if I can buy them from her, since it would be nice to have all the major hierarchy domains. Not that I’d spend a whole lot on them, mind you, and in any event if you own the “.com” you’ve got the one everyone is going to try first anyway. Even so. Being denied the “.net” and “.org,” I did pick up:

Scalzi.info, and

Scalzi.name. Dunno what I’ll do with them yet. I suspect at some point I might give Scalzi.name its own place and then rent space out to all Scalzis who might want a Web site, and give them their own sub domain (so: kristine.scalzi.name), but that requires logistical planning that I’m not going to get into at the moment.

(Interestingly, Scalzi.it — the domain for Italy — goes to a law firm.)

Johnscalzi.com — Since most personal site domains are usually comprised of first and last names, it just made sense to get this one and have it point to Scalzi.com.

Athenascalzi.com — Because maybe one day she’ll want it. A couple of years ago I had registered athenamarie.com, but I forgot about it and let it lapse, and then someone snapped it up ( a woman named Athena, whose middle name, I would surmise, is Marie).

Mencken.com — I keep meaning to do something with this — maybe a political group blog — but again, time and effort and all that conspire against me. Be that as it may, I was somewhat amazed it was available when I checked several years ago; you’d think some libertarian or conservative would have snapped this baby up. Well, I have it, baby. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Bookofthedumb.com — mostly to make sure some competitor didn’t snap it up and use it point to their own books.

Oldmanswar.com — Well, why not?

Indiecrit.com — Late, lamented. I wish I had more time for it.

Blogcritics.com — I actually bought this at the behest of Eric Olsen, who wanted it for the review site he was creating, but a communication mix-up cause him to construct the site at Blogcritics.org. I still own this domain, but it points to the other site. I keep meaning to transfer it over to him, but time, hassle, yadda yadda yadda.

While I was making my recent spree of domain purchases I gave some thought to purchasing scalzisucks.com and johnscalzisucks.com, but then I thought, hell, if someone hates me just that much, who I am I to stop them. Also, with a site name like ScalziSucks.com, it would be pretty clear it wouldn’t be an objective font of Scalzi information. You can’t get too worked up about crap like that (also, quite honestly, I don’t really expect those domains to be snapped up any time soon).

Now I feel all domain-y.