Thread

Years ago—1999, to be exact—I registered my first domain name. I was told that it was too long by one character, and was asked to cut one of them. I did so, and I have been running my site at the misspelled domain ever since.

It has recently occurred to me that the domain name misspelling may be playing a large part in why I haven’t been able to boost the traffic of my website above 60-100 hits a day over the course of eight years online.

So, what I’m wondering is this:

1. Is a 17-character domain name still too long for most servers to handle?

2. In your opinion, do domain name misspellings adversely affect the building of traffic and brand recognition?

Thanks in advance for any feedback you provide.

It could be a combination of what could be seen as an offensive url and the strange miss-spelling.

I probably would have changed the “that” or the “little” rather than just taking an r our of “bastad”.

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. I probably would have lost the “that”, if I could do it now. But I can’t go back to 1999 and change my mind, and littlebastard.com isn’t available. Do you think that the domain is so offensive that I should lose it entirely and go with something else? I have another domain, clarkwoods.com, that I’m relaunching in July, but I’m not sure the content from thatlittlebastad fits in there.

1. Is a 17-character domain name still too long for most servers to handle?

That was not true then, and is not true now. I don’t go looking for the appropriate RFC now, but I seem to remember that you could use 63 (?) chars, certainly more than 17. Behold llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.eu.

2. In your opinion, do domain name misspellings adversely affect the building of traffic and brand recognition?

It probably depends. Flickr could pull it off 😊

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Ingmar.

David’s comment got me thinking a lot since I stepped away from the computer an hour or so ago. What if it’s the potentially offensive domain name that’s the real problem. I mean, I can’t get Google AdWords on it (for better or worse) because of the name. The name is obviously more offensive than I personally find it, because I’ve been asked to get rid of it as my screen name at various places recently. And I just get the feeling that, if it hasn’t worked after seven years, maybe it’s time to “blow it up” as they say in sports. Maybe it’s time to start over and move the content on thatlittlebastad.com to a new section of clarkwoods, after all.

The domain name isn’t the problem. I mean think about it, while it’s nice if you’ve got an easy to remember name, who types in domain names these days? digg is mispelled, reddit makes no sense and many others.

I’m no expert, but I will say this. People outside of your family don’t care about your personal posts about your family. I’m not saying that to be a jerk, it’s just a point. I mean in an age where content is king if the content is mostly about yourself then unless you’re a celebrity nobody will care. Not because it’s bad writing, or that it’s not entertaining, there’s just no way to relate to it.

I like the things you post. I’ve read your site a couple times linking from here.

In my opinion, if you want your site to get lots of traffic that means talk about things lots of people would find in common with you. Current events, hollywood, technology, politics etc. Those are all things people already know about but apparantly like to read on websites.

In the grand scheme of things this website gives you a good indication of how ‘the world’ feels about your site. http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=thatlittlebastad.com/

If they hated it, they’d be there bashing you. if they loved it they’d be there praising you. SO what’s left? they just don’t know about it. SEO is your best friend, and if you start talking more about current events or things that the public is probably searching for you’ll get hit more.

I hope you don’t take this post as negative. I don’t mean it that way. I like your style and humor. You’ve got what’s obviously a great family, and I really like the clean layout of your site.

Also, it’s just my thoughts. I could be completely wrong.

Thanks, JT. On another day, I might have taken it as a negative post—I’m way too sensitive a person, sometimes—but I really appreciate your words. The new site I’m working on, clarkwoods, is going to be focused on a particular subset of creative professionals that I don’t think have been covered all that much. As an MFA graduate, I know all too well the pressures of trying to balance the work a person does to put food on the table, the creative Work a person does to nourish their soul, and the family/personal life a person leads to keep themselves sane. That’s what the new site is about. I’ve lined up interviews with poets, writers, and artists, and I’ve put the word out amongst my network to try and get some contributions. I think one of the other things that can help a site become successful—can, but not necessarily will—is having a group of authors, writing on a single niche, but bringing in several diverse perspectives.

I’m not sure that that site will make a huge splash, but I am willing to bet that it’ll start a conversation—a conversation that’s much needed, according to a recent article and follow-up letters in POETS & WRITERS—and that’ll be good enough for me.

As for thatlittlebastad, I’ve decided to shut it down and move it to a subsection of the new site—clarkwoods.com/chris, probably—where I think that, with the new categorization system I set up a few days ago, it may start to build traffic.

All that said, I still wonder how sites like Heather Armstrong’s dooce.com rise to prominence. I realize she had the combined luck/misfortune of being one of the first to lose her job over her blog, and that that played a part in why she’s gotten so popular. But she writes almost exclusively about her family, and people keep coming back, at least enough people that the ads on her site enable her to support her family. I’m not looking to generate that kind of money, just enough to help pay some bills at the end of those really tough months.

I certainly hope you don’t take it negative. What I meant when I said they ‘dont care’ is not that they dislike it, it’s just that they have no tie in to know your family, so it might not be as important to them.

One other thing. Keep in mind those sites like you mention are often times just flukes. it makes no sense how they got big. But there are others that got huge and were a success of a planned execution. For instance. Everyone thinks Tom just built this little site called myspace and it got HUGE. well, it was a corporation (his) that built it and they had marketing. My point being a lot of things can be misundestood.

Google has a little over 15 billion web pages indexed and that can’t be nearly all of the Internet. It’s a huge world of stuff. But you’re obviously on the right track about multiple authors. Having other perspectives makes a lot of sense.

Don’t take down your site altogether, I enjoy reading it 😊

Oh, I won’t shut it down altogether. I’m just going to move it to clarkwoods.com/chris or something similar. I’ve also been thinking about how this persona of That Little Bastard just isn’t who I am anymore (if it ever was). The personal blog (clarkwoods.com/chris) will maintain the same attitude, but I don’t think that attitude is best exemplified by the moniker of That Little Bastard anymore (again, if it ever was).

I’m glad you dig the site. 😊

Now, if I could only figure out all of the logistics (how to point existing links to new ones, moving my EE installation from one place on the server to another—thatlittlebastad is hosted in the same place as clarkwoods—et cetera, et cetera). I wasn’t planning on launching the new Clarkwoods until the middle of July—I won’t have my first interview until then—but I kind of want to get the transition over with.

Im sure I’ll figure it out. 😊