Making Sense Out of Domains
October 29, 2014   Dave Lewis

Everyone loves PURLs! Who doesn’t want their very own name in the URL they type into their computer? Creating a personalized URL is so popular there are whole companies named after them. Plus, using PURLs has some significant advantages, but it may not be quite as simple as you’d think. Here’s a little basic information you should know about PURLs, domains and subdomains. How can this not be fun!? Domains are the hierarchy of naming conventions on the Internet. Web sites are really organized as numbers, but they are given names – URLs or domain names – as a tool to help in locating them. The highest level domain is the “.com” or “.org” that follows the name. The next level is the name of the site – “snailworks” in our case. The domain level in front of the site name – often “www” – is a subdomain. This is typically where we can get personal. You can read more about domains here. Go ahead if you like – we’ll wait. When you build a PURL, first you will need a domain name. Generally, when someone creates PURLs for you – such as SnailWorks - they will need to host the web page the PURL directs to for data collection purposes, which is why you will not use your own web address for the PURL. For example, when we do a campaign for SnailWorks, we do not use “SnailWorks” in our PURLs. Instead, we use campaign-specific domains such as “HailTheSnail” or “MailMeetsPURL”. Thus, the PURL is “SallySample.HailTheSnail.com” or “SallySample.MailMeetsPURL.com”. We have had conference organizers use the name of the conference as the domain name: SallySample.MFSAMW2013.com. It typically costs $10 - $35 to register a domain with Register.com or GoDaddy.com, although there may be add on costs such as a security certificate if you’re accepting payments. The hardest part is often coming up with a memorable URL that isn’t already in use – at SnailWorks we think that is half the fun. It really is worth thinking of an easy-to-remember name that has meaning to your prospects. The domain you use in your PURLs is also the domain you will use for your Generalized URL (GURL) so it should be memorable. If you really don’t want to create your own domain name for a campaign, we keep an inventory of “house” names at SnailWorks that you can incorporate. One of those domains is “msreply.” If you choose to use this domain, your PURLs would look like this: SallySample.company.msreply.com, where “company” would be you. This involves a bit more typing for your prospects, but it does free you up to include your company name in the PURL rather than searching for your own witty little domain. This string of sub-domains can go on to 127 levels, but let’s not try that, OK? The essential lesson from all of this is that PURLs do not stand alone. If someone is going to create PURLs for you, they’ll need to obtain a domain as well. We know more about this stuff than we like to think about at SnailWorks, so if you need some help, by all means give us a call – even if you just want to really nerd out over it.

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