Cool Domains Don't Change

A lot has been written about pretty permalinks and using the domain name system properly. It all makes a lot of sense to have a decent URL (not that NTS is perfect, but that's another matter) - although for all the cries about making sites easier to navigate and making things better for search engines, all of which is absolutely true, a lot of it is just people being very anal - www.example.com/theitcrowd/episode1 just looks nicer than www.example.com/?p=3734. And yeah, I count myself in amongst the anal lot.

But there's something I noticed the other day with a site that's really odd. And I can't understand why they did it.

A bit of background. I was sitting here doing a bit of investigating about the BANFF World Television Festival; The IT Crowd was up for an award. (It didn't win, BTW - it lost out to Extras. FFS.) And I'm treated to this site. And yes, that is the correct URL: www.banff2006.com. 2006? What?

So, I do a bit of digging. And sure enough, they have a different domain name each year. Some of the earlier ones don't work any more, some do. And all the old sites all archived at www.bwtvf.com. And I think you know what I'm going to ask here now. Erm, why the hell don't they just use something along the lines of www.bwtvf.com/2006?

The the obvious problem with how they're doing things currently is that as soon as you archive your old site from www.banff2006.com to www.bwtvf.com/banff2006 and let the domain lapse (as has happened with the earlier years), you immediately break all your links. It's also just not good from a branding point of view, as it gets rather confusing having all these different domains.

But the worst is yet to come. Let's do a bit of investigating. banff2007.com registered. banff2008.com registered. banff2009.com registered. banff2010.com registered... oooh, what do we have here? banff2011.com available! Let's buy it and fuck up all their plans! In five years.

Actually, I did consider buying it, just to make a point. But I decided against it - less because I'm not a complete cunt, and more because I'm not about to pay £50 just to prove how silly someone is.

I honestly don't understand why someone would do this. Slashes are pretty common in URLs these days, even in content-free glossies for idiots. For someone to go through the added expense and complication of buying different domains for each yearly festival, for the sake of a one character difference in length in your URL... it's just ridiculous.

About this entry

By John Hoare
Posted on Friday, June 30 2006 @ 7:28 am
Categorised in Net
Tagged with permalinks
15 comments

Comments

In the above cash, having a slash in the URL is irrelevant. If they believe in simplicity and don't want to advertise an address that contains a slash, they just have to change the front page (index) content every year, and banff.com is the only address anyone will ever have to learn.

Then just have visible (but not overbearing) links to "previous years" or some such thing and...like magic...they have a simple URL which always points to the correct year and ain't gotta slash to be found.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
June 30, 2006 @ 12:18 pm

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I debated putting this very point, actually. In fact, I wrote a paragraph pointing it out which I then deleted. I wish I hadn't now, as you're absolutely right. I was trying to keep things simple by keeping things exactly as they were but with a different address.

But yeah, I agree with you.

By John Hoare
June 30, 2006 @ 12:22 pm

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Is it not something to do with seo?

By Spid
June 30, 2006 @ 2:56 pm

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>In the above cash

What the FUCK did I mean by that?

By Philip J Reed, VSc
June 30, 2006 @ 10:28 pm

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Case, I think.

By Ian Symes
July 01, 2006 @ 12:51 am

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I've left some drunk phone messages I'd like you to translate as well, Ian.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
July 01, 2006 @ 3:05 am

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'Is it not something to do with seo?'

I can't see why they just can't have www.banff.com though. As John pointed out, their current policy results in many broken links, which won't do their 'brand name' much good.

By Tanya Jones
July 01, 2006 @ 10:22 pm

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True, Tanya. I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was a good idea at all. But they might think it's quite clever, or something.

By Spid
July 02, 2006 @ 1:29 am

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Well, banff.com is already taken. Which is why I suggested they used their existing bwtvf.com instead.

It's not quite as nice a domain, as it's unpronouncable, as so less easy to remember. But surely anything's better than changing your domain each year - especially when at some point you're *going* to run into the problem with availability that I mention above.

By John Hoare
July 02, 2006 @ 5:14 am

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> (It didn't win, BTW - it lost out to Extras. FFS.)

I really like The IT Crowd but Extras definitely deserved to win. So there.

By performingmonkey
July 02, 2006 @ 7:46 pm

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I think they're both shit.

By Ian Symes
July 02, 2006 @ 7:57 pm

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I'm still bemused by this. I was watching some of it the other day, and all I could see was joke after joke after joke, and three great performances. And I'm *really* cynical when it comes to new comedy - I don't fall in love with it easily.

We really will have to do that article when the DVD comes out.

By John Hoare
July 02, 2006 @ 9:34 pm

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> I think they're both shit.

You're more wrong than you'll ever know.

By performingmonkey
July 03, 2006 @ 2:36 am

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hi john hoare we have the same name lol my name is katy hoare. eniwa jst thought id say lol....