Delta CX Hive
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Delta CX Hive
Ep 288: Domain Names, Websites, Copyrights, Web Hosting, & More
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Join me and special guest Piermario Orecchioni as we discuss website topics you might not understand. Come ask your questions!
Sorry for the slight echo for the first 38 min. I didn't realize that a second mic in the room was also on. OOPS!
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All episodes are marked "explicit" since sometimes we use swear words.
Welcome, low ego action heroes and phoenixes. I'm Debbie Levitt from Delta CX. Please let me know if you can hear me okay. We're not listening back to how this sounds, and we hope it sounds good to you. Let us know if we are alright. Hopefully everybody can see and hear us. I'll do a quick check online to see how things look. Um let's see. Okay, there we are on Twitch, and somebody's watching. Okay, so if you have a question about domain names, websites, web hosting, um you name it, uh, please ask in the chat. We would love to take your questions, and uh, we are here live, and uh hopefully we'll get your questions. Um, I also want to mention that part of the reason why we've got Pierre Mario here is because he has a zillion years of running his own company, uh making WordPress websites for his clients, mostly WordPress. You can find him at happierweb.com. Hashtag not sponsored.
SPEAKER_00And uh and he has a new job as tech support for a web hosting you can definitely use whatever free domain um blogging websites and uh other services offer as a free option. But if you're um promoting your company, your business, your um karaoke business, or just to say one random thing, um it's much easier and much more professional to be found at uh domain name that is everybody can get every type of name.
SPEAKER_01Uh I want to remind people you buy a domain, you're really renting it. Because if you stop paying for it, it's not yours, right, Caet Mario?
SPEAKER_00Uh absolutely, yes. Basically you're you're paying. That's right, Debbie. Uh yeah, when you buy a domain, it comes with many quotes. You're actually renting that name from the authority that manages that um domain um so-called extension. So that whatever is um after the dot, like dot com.it dot TV, you name it, uh, that's called extension. And um every uh look at the fine audience. I have fine audience. Uh and the extensions are generally managed by a an authority that um basically uh is in charge of uh making sure that everybody plays according to rules and uh does not abuse domains, this kind of thing. So um the the interesting thing, one of the interesting things about domains is that uh it's almost one of the last part of the internet that are kind of fair and uh regulated for don't need to hire Piet Mario to sign up for your domain name for you.
SPEAKER_01It's best to take control of this yourself and register your own domain name and when it asks you for contact information, put you. Because for decades I've been fighting uh unethical website design companies and freelancers who, for example, will say, Oh yeah, you can get your own domain name. We'll get you PierMario.com. Don't worry, I'll set that up for you. And then when they get the domain name, they put their own name on it as the legal owner, known as the registrant. And what'll happen is if you ever try to fire them or take over that domain or move it to another company, you'll find you don't legally own it. And a an unethical website designer or freelancer or agency will say, Well, we own your domain name, you're gonna have to stay with us, or we'll sell it back to you. So remember, you don't need a middle person to get a domain name. Currently, I'm getting all of my names on namecheap.com. Hashtag not sponsored. There's no relationship between me and them. Um, but you can just go straight to that website and get your own domain name, and you don't have to sign up for any of their extras. You don't have to say yes to websites and yes to email and yes to whatever. The only extra I tend to say yes to is domain privacy. Why do I want domain privacy, Pier Mario?
SPEAKER_00You want domain privacy, Debbie, because this looks like a commercial. We didn't rehearse. Oh no, my domain.
SPEAKER_01Has this ever happened to you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like the skew black and white domain disaster. Um yes, you you want privacy on your um domain registration um data because those information are um that information is publicly available. So uh there's a thing called whois, literally. It's a service that allows you to check who owns uh website, where it's hosted, and a bunch of other information.
SPEAKER_01So if they've made that public and they didn't turn on domain privacy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, usually the the you can still know uh in most cases at least where a domain is being hosted, unless somebody goes a bit more technical, but in general, but it's also kind of common, unfortunately, that if you don't turn this thing on, which is free in most cases, or uh so it's just a checkbox away when you order, or it's like a couple of dollars uh usually free.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But somebody, some hosting companies will happily sell it to you as extra privacy.
SPEAKER_01On name cheap, I'm not paying for it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just you know, it's uh one of those things that you check when you check uh hosting companies and registers. And so it's it's better to keep your data uh private. Um right.
SPEAKER_01So if you go to certain domain names that I own or that you own, you're not going to see my personal name, my business name, my address, my telephone number, my email address. These are all um uh just the the hosting company uh or or the registrar, the pla the company like Namecheap, they'll just put something else in there. They know who I am. I'm not completely secret and unknown, but uh if somebody has a problem with my domain, they would contact Namecheap and Namecheap would find me, but at least my name and and personal information is not out there in a public database. So domain privacy.
SPEAKER_00Always.
SPEAKER_01Hashtag always. Um let you know, we've also talked about um you've got your domain name. So we've got our piermato.com, and now we want to put up our website um promoting your fantasticness. You know, maybe you're building your own small business, maybe you're putting up your portfolio or a resume or CV, could be anything. You're you're going to put up a website. Um, explain to the nice people out there what is a hosting company and why do I need one? I mean, I I bought my domain. What's hosting?
SPEAKER_00Okay. So a hosting company, it's a company that sells the space you need to uh put your files. Let's keep it as simple as possible. Um it's it's literally the company that sells you the space on the internet where you upload your um photographs, audio, uh text, files, whatever. It's a space you again r own for the time you are you have an active hosting service, but most of all, the um what do you also pay is uh the technical infrastructure that allows you to run or install any applications you might want to use for your uh website, such as uh WordPress or other uh so-called content management systems. Uh WordPress is probably the most common of them all, but there's Tumla, Drupal, and a lot of other smaller ones. And uh the hosting company provides you with this, and good hosting companies also um add usually to your plan uh also uh like a professional email service or security services, like right.
SPEAKER_01So you'd be able to get email at piermario.com at whatever your domain name is, part of a hosting package is typically matching email so that you're not using a Gmail or a personal email, you'll have it at your own name.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and uh just uh now that you named Gmail and domain um emails, I want to very quick quickly circle back on something we said earlier about registration data, like Pro tip. Use the oldest, uh most um even less fancy but um you know tested uh email you have, the one you know you'll definitely get email on, and never ever use a domain name email for your registration because if you register um uh your domain at myself at example.org, uh if you let that domain expire, there goes your email, there goes your email, and there goes your chance to reset your password and uh prove that you are the person in charge of that domain. So right.
SPEAKER_01So when you're buying, especially your domain name, because that is kind of the foundation of all of this, make sure that you're using an email address that you're unlikely to lose control of, which I think for many people would end up uh a Gmail or an internet service provider, a Yahoo, a Hotmail, um something that you're not going to lose along the way. So um, and when it comes to hosting, I think a lot of hosting packages confuse people. They go to a uh a hosting company and they say, Oh my gosh, uh, do I need a lot of bandwidth? Do I need a lot of databases? Do I need, I'm seeing all these different packages. How do I know which one I need? And I think the answer is first of all, you might need to ask someone for help. Because we don't know if you're putting up a simple portfolio website or if you're putting up an e-commerce website with a thousand items or VOD coded, I don't know what. So we can't say one package is right for everybody, and that's why there's different packages, because different packages are going to be right for everybody. But if somebody were going to put up a simple informational website or uh kind of a resume CV and portfolio, do they need a big expensive hosting package?
SPEAKER_00Uh, not necessarily. The like a hosting package, even a good one. I mean, if you're in Italy, it's even cheaper because we're used to uh bundles and uh packages that also come with your domain name in what you're paying. But generally you pay for a hosting package and domain names um as an extra uh aside. But a good hosting um package mod come as cheap as 3 euros a month or 5 euros a month. So uh you don't need to spend a lot of money to to get something that it's reliable at least to start with. Then uh one good thing about at least serious hosting companies is that you can um upgrade and downgrade your your services and uh switch from one plan to another one and kind of uh uh provide to your website what it needs as um as it grows or has other needs. So you don't necessarily need to go uh super expensive when you're beginning.
SPEAKER_01Okay, good good to know. Um now for people who want to use WordPress, a lot of them see WordPress.com and they think, oh, if I want a WordPress website, I should just sign up with WordPress.com. But you and I tend to advise people against that. Are you comfortable saying why? Or should those words come out of my mouth?
SPEAKER_00Well, the the no it's it's what it's what she said. But uh no, I'm I'm not necessarily advising against WordPress.com. I got many friends who work there. So uh so there's just a bit of an ongoing uh kind of gray area sometimes when it comes to WordPress. Um and this is as quickly as possible because um the project itself, WordPress, um it's a so-called open source project, like it's a piece of internet software that can be freely uh downloaded and use it used provided you have a place to put it, like the hosting service and a domain name. So technically WordPress is uh is free and open source, and everybody can can use it for free. Uh you pay for the extra services. Um the the gray area comes in uh I mean gray area for new users or people who are not into WordPress. Um the co-founder of uh WordPress and possibly the uh world's most famous WordPress uh person is Matt Mollyweg and is the is also the owner of Automatic, which is his own company that runs a company called uh I mean the company is called Automatic, but their service is WordPress.com, which is basically kind of a simplified uh um hosting company for WordPress. Like you can uh go from uh Alright, I'm gonna have to step in here. Well, just quickly, go from uh free blog too nice. Well, uh I I'm also part of the WordPress community, so I want to play nice and then I will say it.
SPEAKER_01So I have an opinion that he may or may not share that WordPress.com is overpriced, and that you can get lots of WordPress hosting from many good hosting companies. Um in Europe, we're currently recommending Cloud86.
SPEAKER_02Cloud86 is very good.
SPEAKER_01In America, I've been paying for Dreamhost. These are both not sponsored, these are just companies we we like. There are other companies as well. Um, but um you don't have to put a WordPress website on WordPress.com. Um I personally think that WordPress.com is overpriced for what you get, and you'll probably spend less uh if you find WordPress hosting from another company like look into Dreamhost, look into Cloud86, look into other hosting companies. Um it's not that WordPress.com is bad or evil or wrong. I just think it tends to be overpriced.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, the the only other difference is that in in a way WordPress.com uh runs a kind of a customized uh version of WordPress because they come with their own services and uh like you know interesting things they do with WordPress. Uh like an AI builder system, yay.
SPEAKER_01Hire this guy happierweb.com.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well like the the short version is that if you installed the free uh version of WordPress on your own hosting, you are basically free to do uh everything you want and add or piece together uh plugins. Yeah, plugins and add every function you want to your website, and you don't necessarily have to upgrade to a like a higher client to be able to do XYZ.
SPEAKER_01So right, there's a bit of upsell happening on WordPress.com that you might not get from other hosting companies. Um let's also mention that when you have a WordPress website, wherever you've put it, there are ways to move that site to another hosting company. So if you start at WordPress.com and you feel like it's expensive or you feel like you're being overcharged, can that site be migrated uh to another hosting company?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes and no. That that's one of the the downsides. Okay. You can um you can migrate from workpress.com to uh another uh let's say um regular WordPress um website if you are on a plan that allows you to uh use um the there are plugins that allow you to basically create a package with everything your uh website like a big backup. Basically a big backup and then move it outside. Otherwise you can export the contents of your website like text and images, but you can't export layouts and basically you would have to rebuild the website. Not good. Not always great.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so something for people to remember is that if they start on WordPress.com and they find they want to move their site later, they might find that it's not as easy to move as they might have hoped.
SPEAKER_00It might not be if you especially if you're on some lower plans, there are some limits. But uh again, uh nothing against WordPress.com, which otherwise runs on super solid uh hosting because they tend to have WordPress like they are literally the sum of the people who make WordPress, literally, so reliable, fast everything, just maybe not targeted at uh power users at a certain uh level.
SPEAKER_01So and some of you might feel like you're not a power user, but you just might want to make sure you have the flexibility to take your site and your email and other stuff with you when you move around. So WordPress.com is not one of my recommendations at this time, even though I do recommend WordPress as the foundation of a website. But we know that sites like Squarespace and Wix are very popular right now. Some people even build websites in Notion or Framer. So can you speak a little bit about? Let's talk about uh let's say you build a site in Squarespace or Wix, and you go, ooh, um, this Squarespace site is pretty cool, but I don't like paying what they're charging. I think I'll move it to another hosting company and give it Enough Squarespace. What's the problem with me thinking that?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh the problem is too bad. You can't move it. Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh so the Squarespace only exists on Squarespace.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the the again. Uh the short version here is that services such as Squarespace, uh Wix, uh Shopify itself. Uh and um these systems basically are can be pretty good. Uh like I I think that like Squarespace has some of the best, slickest uh designs ever, best galleries, everything. Uh very good, but it's a closed system. So it uh starts and ends there, and it's not always um easy or possible at all to move out. Like there's not an easy way out.
SPEAKER_01And as someone who's now working in tech support for a hosting company from time to time, you get a potential customer who says, Hey, I've heard your hosting company is good, I like your prices and packages, I want to put my Squarespace website on your hosting company, and you unfortunately have to tell them.
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm sorry we can't.
SPEAKER_01Because it's um yeah, it's also once you stop paying for Squarespace, your site goes poof.
SPEAKER_00Yes, Squarespace, um Shopify, like there are other uh systems as well, but basically um I would like I would recommend before you start building your website to like ask around and uh you know get informed on what the options are uh because the the like the teams here are usually like open web versus closed systems. And as in open web we um we have services like uh WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and uh most of these are uh so-called open source um softwares, so everybody can can use them, contribute, modify, help translate, whatever. So uh they come with maybe um a bit steeper um learning curve, but um in my opinion, not just because I build websites for people as my work, um the the effort you put into this um uh this kind of tools uh is usually well spent because you're not locked out. Like you can always move or change things within these systems in a way or another.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, like a notion site only exists on Notion. Yeah. We've also learned recently, I think a framer site can be put, can be exported and put somewhere else. Did we hear that?
SPEAKER_00Uh we're not talking about it. Possible, but I think that frame or from what I've seen, um I mean every company right now is trying to get as much uh profit or keep as much as possible within their boundaries. So even if it's technically possible, probably to host a website made with Framer or any other system. Um now that we name Framer, Framer sells their own hosting plans. So it even if it's probably possible, I don't know. Uh it just makes more sense if you're a Framer user to uh stay within Framer because they are the the experts. Like who's more expert than the people who build Framer about Framer? So just that.
SPEAKER_01Uh great, thanks. I see in my notes that I also wanted to mention, and we're gonna go back to domain names for a moment. I want to talk about something we used to call cyber squatters.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um and what happened sometimes, and this came up in our Discord community, was someone had a domain name, a domain name. Let's just pretend it's Piermario.com, and they decided, oh, well, this is expensive, this is X dollars, euros, rupees, whatever per year. I don't want to pay this anymore. Um, I'm gonna stop paying for the domain name, or I'm going to buy a different domain name that is cheaper for me each year. And then what happened was the domain name expires. After the domain name expires and you stop paying for it, it goes out into the universal bucket of available domain names. But what sometimes happens, and we can't say if this will happen or not, to any particular domain name, but there are cyber squatters. And a cyber squatter is someone who registers a domain name in just in the hopes of reselling it. So if you let Piedmario.com go by accident or on purpose, and I'm a cyber squatter, and I would say nowadays the cyber squatters are probably using AI and grabbing domains as soon as they expire, then I can always say, okay, PiatMario.com is now 2,000 euros if you want it back. And you might be like, 2,000 euros? I just bought it for 10. And what happens is they say, too bad, I own this now. You let your domain go. It's mine now. If you want it, you're gonna have to pay me 2,000 euros, 100 euros, 40,000 euros, dollars, rupees, whatever it is. And so you just want to make double dog sure, put a reminder in your calendar if you have to. If you don't want to lose your domain name, uh in the old days you would lose a domain name, and the next thing you knew it was a porn site.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or now it's uh nice gambling websites or crypto.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, gambling crypto, and and what happens is either they keep it and they hope that the traffic that used to come to the site looking for you is now traffic that they're getting to their gambling crypto porn, or sometimes they just put up a for sale page, but you don't have any rights to that name anymore unless you want to enter into a trademark fight with this person, and I want to talk for a moment about trademarks, so feel free to take a nap.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you a couple of things about trademarks. And if you register a trademark with your country uh and your domain name matches it, if somehow you lose that domain name or someone uses a very similar one, you could fight that person. But that might take lawyers, that might take arbitration. It used to be the WIPO process, W I P O. I don't know if that is still how it's done. I haven't fought a domain name in many years, but I used to do that. And so you are not guaranteed to get a domain or win it back or any of these things. So you just want to be very careful about choosing domain names. If Microsoft is Microsoft.com, you should not take Microsoft.net or Microsoft.ai or Microsoft.sex or whatever it is, because guess what? Microsoft is a protected trademark, and they can come after you if they think that you are using that name in a way that might be inappropriate or confusing. So remember that trademarks cut both ways. They can get you in trouble when you try to use a business name, or if someone tries to use your name or take your domain or register a very similar one, you can fight them, but these fights cost money. And so it's not like there is some person or judge or AI somewhere where you can write a complaint and they say, Oh, Debbie's right, she should get that domain done. The domain goes back to you. No, these things take months, and they look at evidence and there's fights, and again, I haven't done one in many, many years, but they used to be long and thousands of dollars uh on a good day. So just please be careful that you put it into your calendar. When does your hosting expire? When is your domain name up for renewal? Put these in your calendar with yearly reminders and put them in a month or so ahead of time so you're not surprised that you lost a domain name. This especially happens when someone's credit card expires and they don't realize their credit card is expired, the domain name or the hosting comes due, you think you've put your credit card on it, it'll go through, and through some miscommunication, you don't even realize you didn't pay for it. All of a sudden, you've had clients who have called you up going, my domain name is gone, my website is down, my email doesn't work, or things like that. So is there other advice that you can give our listeners and watchers about making sure they don't lose a domain name or website that they don't want to lose?
SPEAKER_00Uh well, in general, the advice like the good practice starts again with registration, use contact information, hey. Uh use contact information that you know you are actively using, so it's not an email you're no longer checking, or a phone number uh that you no longer own, something like that. But at the same time, keep your um registration information updated, like credit card and um and everything. Good hosting companies usually send you reminders about acceleration. In most cases, when such thing happens, like when a domain expires, customers just overlook uh the email because hosting companies sometimes and domain registers start sending you reminders months before. So it's like when you see the same email coming over and over, you might tend to ignore them wrong. Like you can ignore them if you check that your automatic renewal is on on an active credit card. So that's uh that's good advice. The the good news or the the thing that brings back the what I said earlier about domain registration uh being a somewhat fair game.
SPEAKER_01If technical issue with the sound, I hear echo.
SPEAKER_00Oh, uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_01We've been echoing this whole time?
SPEAKER_00I hope not.
SPEAKER_01Testing. Testing.
SPEAKER_00We're in karaoke mode.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, are we in karaoke mode?
SPEAKER_00Uh I hope we were.
SPEAKER_01No, we're not in karaoke mode. I don't know where the echo is coming from. Is it really bad? Uh I am not sure where the echo is coming from. I'm not seeing anything in the system that's causing it. Um, that's causing it.
SPEAKER_00So it was echo all over?
SPEAKER_01It was uh echo for 38 minutes.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00Do not let your website expire. In that case, echo was in that case, echo was crazy.
SPEAKER_01We had people watching live. Why didn't they say something?
SPEAKER_00We might have to redo.
SPEAKER_01But anyway, um Yeah, we've got four people watching on YouTube. We had a view on LinkedIn. Why didn't somebody say? It's okay, it wasn't that bad. Okay. I think we fixed it. Did we fix it? We accidentally had the the sound coming from the microphone and from the camera. That's what it was. Um the echo was a bit distracting, but not that bad. I think that's what it was. Sorry, everybody. I thought I had turned that off before we started.
SPEAKER_00We can do episode two without echo at some point.
SPEAKER_01That's alright. I think we've got good information and the fine people will put up with us. If anybody has any questions, we're happy to answer them. We're live. Let us know what you wanna what you wanna know. Um, I'll check back on my notes. Keep going.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just quickly what I was saying is that uh in order to lose a domain name, you kind of have to put little effort because the moment your website expires and you don't um renew, it doesn't necessarily disappear on most hosting companies. Uh cheap hosting companies tend to terminate immediately your service the minute that your uh hosting plan expires. I would avoid those. Uh other hosting companies would keep your website on for a limited time to give you uh time to um pay and uh like if you are some people still pays hosting and uh gracious. Yeah, but like some people still do bank transfers. So some hosting companies allow to pay for like five days from the expiration, but usually not preferred. Uh so if a domain expires, it goes into um a frame of time called uh literally the redemption period. And uh basically this is a time you have in which you can still recover your domain name in most cases for a fee. So uh nice hosting companies will charge you not a lot of money. Uh some other hosting companies, uh I once I don't remember who it was, but once a hosting company charged a customer like eighty dollars to uh turn their name back on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like I asked Claude the other day what what it can cost, and Claude said sometimes it's one or two hundred dollars. So there's definitely a penalty if you uh forget to renew your domain name and then you try to save it during this grace period or redemption period. So, you know, I'm the kind of person who puts annual reminders into my calendar weeks before something, double check that this was paid. I do that with domains. I do it with my post office box. I don't want to find that my post office box wasn't renewed and now I don't have a post office box.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, anything you don't want to lose, get it in your calendar with a uh a reminder.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but like checking your email and auto-renewal are generally your best bet. Right.
SPEAKER_01Oh, and let's also remind everybody that a lot of spammers pretend to be hosting companies and domain registrars. I get about 10 spam emails a day. A day right now, pretending that they are DreamHost, which is my hosting company, saying, You're gonna lose your domain name, uh, your email box is full, uh, your website's going to be turned off, uh, your payment didn't go through, and and all the emails have been designed to look exactly like the emails that DreamHost sends me. But all you have to do is first of all, do not click on them, and just all I do is I look at the from, and it's never from Dreamhost. It's always from Squizzick, you know, it's always from unpronounceable thing and Gmails and whatever. So again, this is an area where people get very nervous and they get sloppy and they go, Oh my god, uh, I'm gonna lose my dot com or I'm gonna lose my website. Oh my god, I better click on this and pay for it. And it's completely a scam, so be careful.
SPEAKER_00Right. And another thing to notice before you click on anything you that you shouldn't, uh, is that in most cases you can tell these emails are sketchy because their tone is very harsh or it's not polite at all. Like a hosting company will never send you or Apple will never send you anything. A bitchy email. Yeah, or the using uh exclamation points like renew now or else. Right. So if if the tone is not nice and professional and relax and just a reminder, something's odd. So also beware of uh emails. Uh I got one from a customer today, forwarded, looked totally legit. You just hover with your mouse on buttons, see what the address is.
SPEAKER_01That's true too. You can hover over buttons and links before you click and notice that you're going to schools.korea.
SPEAKER_00That and from uh the and from you have to check the address because sometimes they uh if you don't check what's the address, the sender's name might be your actual hosting company.
SPEAKER_01Right, they'll say the sender is dream host, but then the from email is squizz squizz square share at hotmail.com.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, so just uh don't click on don't panic. And if you get an email like that, the first thing you do is go to your like log into your hosting account, check the expiration date. If everything is in place and in order there, that's the source of truth. Yeah like that's where you checked. Um click anything, log into your account. If you have to renew, renew on your um hosting account, if you have to check for dates, that's where you go. Like, don't just rush to um click on links or whatever.
SPEAKER_01So Anna Lucia's got uh a good question that we semi-covered but not completely. So let's go there. And if anybody else has any questions, today we're talking domain names, websites, hosting, trademarking, whether or not you need to trademark stuff, which uh ultimately you mostly don't, um unless you want to fight people for using your trademarks, like I've Delta CX trademarked, but I'm not gonna trademark Debbie Levitt, and you don't have to either. So Anna Lucia says, I don't know if you already answered this. Feel free to not answer if you did. But what's your opinion on domain names and portfolios? For example, you choose Debbie Levitt.com for your portfolio. Should you ever update it? What are the consequences of losing your portfolio's domain? Do you think it may be bad if you change it something to something like Debbie Levitt.it or something like that? So typically, uh, once I pick a domain name for my portfolio or my business, I usually don't change it unless I go through some sort of business rebrand. So, for example, many of you know my company as Delta CX, but that's relatively new. That's a name I started using seven, eight years ago. Before that, we were called P-Type, short for prototype, because that's most of what my company did. Before that, we were called Brass Flowers because that's the legal name of my company in memory of my grandmothers. And before that, we were called Aswas. So throughout time, I have had some different email addresses and websites at some different domain names, but I mostly changed it when I was doing a big rebrand. Other than that, I've owned DebbieLevitt.com for a very long time. I'm not sure I even have anything now. I think it just dumps you. I think I have my voice acting page there right now, but I haven't looked at that in about 10 years. So I think it's good to pick a domain name that can be your website if you're gonna start your own. agency or your own business, then you come up with a business name. If you want to use your personal name, you can use your personal name. Doesn't have to have your last name. He's Piermario.com. He's got Piermario.com, though I don't know if he's using it because he's one name Pierre Mario like Madonna.
SPEAKER_00Some Pierre Mario, at least one, is still mad at me for registering. But what can we do? Those were the nineties.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I thought I thought at one point about getting D E B B dot IE, but I couldn't register an Ireland name at the time because I had no address there. So ultimately I think it's good to pick a name that can be yours as kind of a forever domain name, where you can get email at me at DebbieLove It.com or hello at DebbieLove It.com or info at DebbieLove It.com. That way that is always your email and it looks professional. It looks more professional than Coolchick82 at Gmail or I've seen some pretty strange email addresses over over the years. But I think it's great to have one that can be yours and yours. And that way if you move hosting companies or you build your website on a different platform, it's always analusia.com or analusia.portugal or whatever you end up doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah if I can add something to that. You can thank you. Hello. Something I do like we do for ourselves but I advise my customers to do is once you pick your domain name, uh if available also it's a good idea to buy at least the most common domain extensions that are available. Like if you register if you're an Italian company or a freelancer it might be a good idea to register both both dot IT and dot com. So also because sometimes you will end up giving your domain name just by saying your um address to somebody and they might not remember was it dotit, was it dot com? So if you something else like dot pt for Portugal and if you bought dot PT and dot com whatever they put you can have one domain as your actual address for the website and the other domain just um a name that forwards visitors to the actual domain.
SPEAKER_01And this gets a little more complicated and you might need some help doing this but the bottom line is you you can always decide hey this is my brand and I'm gonna buy a couple of domain names just to know that I've kind of locked up the name. That doesn't mean you have to buy everything. I remember in the 90s I used to buy dot com dot org.net because those were the main big three and I didn't want anybody to compete with me with a very similar domain name but now I feel less precious about that stuff. You know I've got DeltaCX.com if you want to be deltacxo I I guess I probably won't fight you but a lot of people are going to end up on my website thinking they're going to yours like I win um you know when I've got the dot com so but I do use some some domain names that uh that use other extensions the main thing to note is that some of the weirder extensions um are s sometimes become famous for spam and when we try to email people from some of these extensions we find that they're just naturally going into spam I had that with my P type email my P type email I eventually found was naturally going into spam and I had to pick a because I didn't have a dot com. IT makes sense that's that I don't know what people's opinions are.
SPEAKER_00That's red. Actually red is good using your uh country's own um domain extension domain extension uh might actually be uh a nice touch if you're dealing with something that is like authentic or typical from your country like if you have a restaurant and you're Italian having a dot IT or if if you produce wine or uh I don't know pastes danata I don't know it's okay to have a dot IT or a dot pt because that's uh as local as it gets but if you can and it's available also get the dot com.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and I I used to um have a lot of fights with people on this but about 25 years ago when I don't know if you remember when dot CC came out and dot was it WS or dot GG there were a couple of domains that came out at one point because people acted like oh my gosh we're running out of dot coms and so we're gonna need dot C C or something else. And I always told people that while some of these um uh uh extensions are interesting or unique or whatever and and we do use them sometimes um uh they're they're sometimes not as memorable and so in if you say hey uh come find me at Pierre Mario dot cc and I'll be like Pierre Mario dot wait what was it again? And so I think a lot of people tend to think in terms of the country that they're in or dot com and dot net. There's also dot EU. So if people are looking more broadly at the EU you don't have to pick a country there's dot eu um I think if you're in the UK it's very common to see dot co.uk or dot com dot au for Australia. So I I think that if you can get a dot com that makes sense but you want it to be something that is easy to hear, easy to spell, so um that you're not saying weird gobbledy mess, you know, to people because ultimately this is marketing. You want people to go oh deltacx.com hey that's short and memorable I can I can type that in um or we had P-type P-type yeah I always used to say P-type short for prototype and people go oh okay I can remember that or my original company name was as was the opposite of as is you know oh as was A-S-W-A-S I can remember that and so I usually tried to go with shorter names that were memorable and spelled the way that they sounded so that I didn't have the clo the hardest one I had was P type but when I said short for prototype people got it um but um I try not to pick names that are too weird. I've tried a couple of names that were weird and they were hard for people to remember and that worked against me. I would say the weirdest name we've got right now is probably for our karaoke business we're using pandemoniosparty because we're calling our business pandemonios party um because we're karaoke DJs. There is dot party and you might be thinking dot party I don't want that and that's fine maybe if you're doing a party themed business like karaoke like we are it could make sense. Yeah not lawyer dot party like probably probably not I think there's dot lawyer yeah I mean sure but that there's also dot XYZ literally there's some odd domain names so yeah so um it's really up to you but in general I think that when it comes to trying to look professional you're looking at dot com you're looking at net doctor party doctor actually okay so in the 90s I had a couple of clients who were doctors and what became super hot for doctors do you remember this?
SPEAKER_00I don't remember Moldova oh because uh MD?
SPEAKER_01Right oh okay the country of Mold so a lot of the two letter extensions what what's called a CCTLD you can Google that was uh they were all represent countries so for example dot Pt is is is that Portugal or Palestinian Portugal no Portugal um but dot TV it's the island Tuvalu right dot IL Israel dot AU Australia like every country um and then there's some things you haven't even thought so a.md was Moldova and they decided they were going to sell to everybody you didn't have to show that you had a residence there and the doctors that I were working with were losing their minds over buying all theMD names that they could because they thought oh my gosh that's going to be so memorable because I'll be you know I'll get like my name dot MD and and so I think that some of these weirder um TLDs or extensions or domain names can make sense but remember this is all about marketing and if people don't remember your name or can't find your website or accidentally go to someone else's website you've got a marketing problem so yeah so you're happierweb.com yes you got a dot com I'm deltacx.com among other things a dot net and a dotit right and and my Italian business because we started it before I used the Delta CX name my Italian business is P-type so we we bought I remember we bought Ptype.it because it's an Italian registered company and we bought ptype.eu okay but I don't think we did anything with it um we I never owned p-type.com that was part of my original problem somebody else owned it from the very start and so I ended up with um some weird names um for my personal email which I don't share so I'm not gonna tell you I use a dot B Z which is believes they have opened up that was when people were trying to decide if they wanted biz like but then they made B I Z so you can get a dot biz. But again the some of these are cool and relevant and some of these are weird. You know if we could get karaoke I would but we couldn't so we did party especially because Italians the word party is not party in Italian but the Italians have seen the word party definitely. Yeah so it was a word that could still fly in in Italy and when you saw pandemonios party you understand that this is going to be some sort of fun party based business whereas if you saw pandemonium dot IT you might just think it's wackiness because of the word pandemonium. Right. So we we made some decisions there. I hope they'll work out for us um but uh what else can we I'll check my notes uh anything else you want to talk about domain names hosting websites uh what was I saying earlier so we covered registration we covered losing your domain um I want to talk briefly about copyrights right sometimes people say to me hey should I copyright my website or should I copyright my portfolio or whatever and I say what does that mean? What are you trying to protect against? If someone's gonna steal your portfolio and pretend that your work is theirs I don't think a copyright symbol is going to stop them from doing that unethical evil thing. Sending something to the copyright office like the United States copyright office if you really want to register it costs money. Now just saying copyright on something costs no money but you have to check the rules of your country. In America and again I'm not a lawyer but in general the rules are if you create something uh a a writing work a musical work an art work these types of things these can get a copyright but technically the copyright is yours because you made this unless you sell the copyright to somebody else or you assign it to somebody else and that's one of the things we've talked about in the past with contracts um and so if uh if I wrote an article for somebody else I would probably assign the copyright to them and that means they now own the article and could do whatever they want with it. So by default if you make a website of original things that are truly yours your writing your art your work it is technically already your copyright and you could pay to copyright it or register it but my question is then what? Let's pretend somebody steals your work are you going to send a copyright lawyer after them? Probably not you know that you have to think about oh are you going to send a trademark lawyer after somebody if they try to use your business name maybe you will and maybe you won't um some of you know that I have some trademarks and some of you know that an unlikable person I won't name some years ago tried to use one of my trademarks and I found out about a week later um because a bunch of people started writing to me hey I didn't know you were working with so and so I thought you two didn't like each other. What? And then I found so and so was using something very very close to the four horsemen of bad UX and I had registered a trademark on that which is hundreds of dollars in America and um in before involving lawyers I wrote so and so an email and I said in America we say cease and desist I said you cannot use this this is my registered trademark. I have the protection of the law on my side you're using something too similar and it's obviously really similar because I'm getting multiple emails from even strangers asking me if I'm working with you. And I am definitely not working with you because I don't like you. So if this is confusing people this is uh definitely an infringement of my trademark and if you don't change this I will happily get lawyers uh on your case and this person tried fighting me in email and told me I was wrong I don't understand trademarks they can use this name blah blah blah and um I wrote back the kind of line I think people in my family would have really appreciated and I said you know I had the feeling this would be a good financial year for me but I never predicted it would become it would happen from suing you. Right and then wouldn't you know before I got any lawyers involved that person changed the wording they were using and the problem went away which is the best case scenario. I don't want as much as I would love to have that person's money in the end I don't want drama I don't want fights and I don't want lawsuits so I'm happy that person stopped using that stuff. But if I didn't have the registered trademark and I just said well the four horsemen of bad UX is mine it might have been a different type of fight. I could still prove that I used it years before that person did and I would probably win that fight. But it's different. So before you enter into intellectual property stuff, copyrights, trademarks, patents ask yourself if someone stepped on the toes of this am I paying a lawyer to go after them? Most of us won't. We just don't have that money Yeah for the rest of us uh when it comes to images things we write or create pictures anything the other option is to wish AI companies scraping the internet to go bankrupt and burn in hell as soon as possible if you ask me I can see that yes yes yes not an AI fan over here so understandable yes um yes and I'm not an AI I'm a Claude fan but I'm not an AI fan when it comes to art music imagery uh etc um anything that that that's been trained on so um that could wrap up our show for today if anybody has any questions about domain names websites portfolios um again I'm not a lawyer but I can try to say a few helpful things about copyrights and trademarks uh website hosting domain name registration please let me know if you have any follow-up questions this will be archived on YouTube on the Delta CX Hive channel please subscribe of course join our free Discord uh check out our upcoming courses and all of these are linked from DCX.to DCX.to a cool domain name yes very very nice and short and it's easy for me to say to you just go to DCX short for Delta CX DCX.to and find links to everything and um so that's a cool domain the dot TOs can be fun to own those are uh those make you feel like you are headed somewhere I will start the background music that says we're going to be ending the show. Um if anybody has a question you have seconds to to get it to us.
SPEAKER_00Write it in the comments like YouTube people say.
SPEAKER_01That's right if you put it in the YouTube comments I promise uh we'll answer it. Um but uh thanks to everybody for this thanks to all the conversations in the Discord community that gave me the idea to turn this into a show this is Take Action Tuesday I hope everybody will take action and everybody listening on the audio only podcasts spread the word about the Delta CX Hive. So I'm going to flame us out of here see everybody tomorrow for Ask Me Anything.
SPEAKER_00Thanks Pierre Mario thank you