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[mikejkelley]

I've recently secured a regional seed fund application and I'm trying to come up with a name for my company to incorporate as.

Thought I'd mention that many of the domain names I searched at whois.com last month now have squatter pages. It occurs to me that whois.com would have financial incentive to sell its search history to squatters.

Take it for what it's worth, just a heads up.

[justinfic]

What I always do when searching for domains is try to register it, and see if it errors out or if it allows me to get it. I can't say they don't run a whois to check behind the scenes, but fwiw I have checked for domains and then come back months later and had them still available.

Domains are also cheap enough that if you're even slightly interested in it and it's available, just get it. When I was trying to find domains for possible studio names I ended up getting like 5-6 domains before I got one I was happy with using. All of them together are the price of one xbox/ps3 game, which is cheap when you consider it's the gateway to your presence on the internets.

Also when looking, I found that any studio names in the form of "Noun Games" or "Adjective Noun Games" are bad news. Almost always taken, and when they're not, unless there is some personal meaning/symbolism to Adjective Noun, they feel weak and I start to doubt whether I really like it after only a few days. Portmanteaus and weird made-up compound words I had much better luck with.

[Player 3]

Indeed, what Justinfic said. Not that I had experience, but I do check a WHOIS whenever I have a possibly name. If you want, just use something simple like Team Cosine, a name I just thought off the top of my head.

[mikejkelley]

Player 3, I'm suggesting that you not use whois.com to search for the reasons speculated above.

justinfic, I went with Adj. Adj. Adj. lol. My company will be known as SuperMuchoMondo(.com)!

Unless I change my mind again.

[mikejkelley]

Can anyone here suggest a decent domain registry service? The reason I ask is bcs in the early 2000s I registered a domain w/ a fly-by-night whose small print said that they are a "sponsor" of the domain name and they took ownership of the domain I owned and re-sold it.

[justinfic]

I just use the panel at Dreamhost. I use them for hosting too. No idea if they're the best out there (they're probably not) but I've been using them for years and never had problems.

[kamac]

Phew. I just opened up google translate and tried to fix up some words together. Finally i've got something that seemed OK.

[dcfedor]

@mikejkelley - I recently setup my .com using internetbs.net. I did quite a bit of shopping around and review scouring before I chose them. They had a reasonable price (not the lowest, but much lower than many), good features (like free private WHOIS), and folks seemed to have good things to say about them in the past few years.

I can't speak to their longevity yet (only signed up a week or so ago), but fwiw, been pleased so far.

Others I looked up:
godaddy.com
1and1.ca
enomcentral.com
namecheap.com
name.com
dynadot.com

For best results, I found searching for a handful of the above names together turned up pretty good forum threads and reviews.

[Woseseltops]

Also when looking, I found that any studio names in the form of "Noun Games" or "Adjective Noun Games" are bad news. Almost always taken, and when they're not, unless there is some personal meaning/symbolism to Adjective Noun, they feel weak and I start to doubt whether I really like it after only a few days. Portmanteaus and weird made-up compound words I had much better luck with.

That's what I've found out as well recently. I'd come up with some pretty cool and original names... but when I've looked them up they were all gone. Only pick something you are 100% sure no person on earth ever thought of it before, otherwise it will be taken.

[Leroy Binks]

I have used godaddy.com to setup four different websites for different companies.  It is easy to use and register domain names and setup hosting with as well.  Prices are reasonable and ease of access is great for my clients, most of which had little idea of where to begin or how to go about it.  Would recommend for anyone looking to streamline the process.