Did you know that you can have your own domain name for anywhere between $9 and $35 a year?

Here are some advantages that, for me, make it a well-spent $15:

• Unlimited email addresses: Most domain name registrars (I use Directnic will let you set up email forwarding, including a catchall address. This means I can use amazon@squarez.com when I log into Amazon, junk@squarez.com when I give my email address to some marketer, etc. All of these are automatically forwarded to the email address provided by my ISP. I can then set up my email program to filter out anything addressed to junk@squarez.com.
• A permanent email address: As long as you pay your $15/year to keep your domain, it’s yours. You can change your ISP; all you need to do is change the email forwarding information and your correspondents don’t need to know.
• An easy-to-remember URL for your web page: Most domain name registrars will let you set up domain name forwarding. This means you can host your web page anywhere, and set up your personal domain name to point to that page. For example, if (I’m not) I were hosting SquareZ at geocities, I could set squarez.com to point to http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/xxxx/index.html. So no one would need to remember the geocities address; they could get there through my own domain name.
• A permanent URL: Again, as long as you keep your domain name, you can change where you actually host your web pages and no one needs to know. Links to your page will still work.
• Bannerless web pages: Well, you don’t get this for $15/year; you’ll probably need to pay somebody to host your pages without advertising. This is my own bias; I think banners and especially pop-ups are tacky. But with your own domain name, you have a lot of freedom in where you host your pages, and you can find some relatively inexpensive hosting solutions. Maybe you could even find a friend who would let you use their web host. I host pages for the Albuquerque Square Dance Center and Square Dance Women.
• Name brand recognition: It’s just a little cooler to type in “tonyoxendine.com” rather than “www.aol.com/homepages/blahblahblah”. Or “dosado.com” Or “squaredancing.com”.

Are all the good domain names taken? Certainly the first ones you might think of for square dancing at the .com TLD (Top Level Domain) are in use. However, here are some that aren’t:

• 24-7-squaredance.com
• allsquaredance.com
• best-squaredance.com
• bestsquaredance.com
• better-squaredance.com
• bettersquaredance.com
• cyber-squaredance.com
• cybersquaredance.com
• easy-squaredance.com
• easysquaredance.com
• more-squaredance.com
• moresquaredance.com
• online-squaredance.com
• onlinesquaredance.com
• real-squaredance.com
• realsquaredance.com
• squaredance-24-7.com
• squaredance-central.com
• squaredance-city.com
• squaredance-direct.com
• squaredance-help.com
• squaredance-land.com
• squaredance-mania.com
• squaredance-megasite.com
• squaredance-music.com
• squaredance-nation.com
• squaredance-now.com
• squaredance-online.com
• squaredance-planet.com
• squaredance-plus.com
• squaredance-quest.com
• squaredance-radio.com
• squaredance-space.com
• squaredance-supersite.com
• squaredance-tech.com
• squaredance-time.com
• squaredance-town.com
• squaredance-universe.com
• squaredance-web.com
• squaredance-world.com
• squaredance-zone.com
• squaredanceandmore.com
• squaredancecenter.com
• squaredancecity.com
• squaredancedirect.com
• squaredancegalaxy.com
• squaredancehelp.com
• squaredanceland.com
• squaredancemania.com
• squaredancemegasite.com
• squaredancemusic.com
• squaredancenation.com
• squaredancenetwork.com
• squaredanceonline.com
• squaredanceplanet.com
• squaredancesale.com
• squaredancespace.com
• squaredancetech.com
• squaredancetime.com
squaredancetower.com
• squaredancetown.com
• squaredanceuniverse.com
• squaredanceweb.com
• squaredancewizard.com
• squaredancezone.com
• super-squaredance.com
• supersquaredance.com
• your-squaredance.com
• yoursquaredance.com

Plus, there are other TLDs available: .name, .us, .info, .tv, .biz. American Square Dance magazine has changed from “dosido.com” (which now goes to “dosado.com”) to “squaredance.ws”. “Ws” is the TLD for Western Samoa…but we could think about it as referring to “western squares”.