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about 3 years ago Syntax Podcast

Where to Register a Domain

Wes Bos

Wes Bos Host

Scott Tolinski

Scott Tolinski Host

Topic 0 01:03

Discussing domain registrar features

Wes Bos

in that country.

Wes Bos

I don't know. I don't really think there's a lot of money to be made

Scott Tolinski

before moving on. And I can if you ever heard of I can, you'll see I can all over these domains, passport here. Your handle I I like that. That's The best. Me too because I have a nice domain now, so I'd like to use that.

Wes Bos

Are they going to bait and switch on you? And I should ask for all the data, and that's that's a name server. So burning VC money for 3 years. And then when add a add a subdomain every time we want it. Yeah. Subdomain. Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. Wild stuff. Alright. Let's get into the actual domain,

Scott Tolinski

Right? And then I think they just started that Zip. Then that's the dumbest idea ever. It's a I been who who

Wes Bos

.coms were like, oh, register it for $4, Squarespace. Yeah. There's another one out there, website creator. Hey. Can you go to godaddy.com?

Scott Tolinski

and they get to just say, alright. Yeah. You you can be a registrar or not. And then you get to then work on your actual technical back end for that service. But

Wes Bos

And sometimes trying to consolidate them, I was on like 7 or 8 over the years, and I have finally moved them all over

Wes Bos

before they sold it to Squarespace.

Scott Tolinski

I saw somebody saying, this is the biggest rip off ever. You're buying something that doesn't even exist,

Wes Bos

They used to charge you to hide many years. And it's always like, oh, yeah, I use Porkbun, and it's usually somebody who's like,

Wes Bos

Specifically GoDaddy, They could they could pull that out from under you. I probably wouldn't put your business on one of those, but if it's a kind of a fun domain, Another thing to think about is if they will proxy is For many years, I'm a big fan of it. Hover is from 2Cows.

Scott Tolinski

You have to give the ICANN $3,500

Wes Bos

Domain name registration So whoever is behind .online domains, they're probably You're allowed to keep your Af domain name, and here's all the details. So I was pretty surprised by them, and their pricing seems to be for actually implementing it. And I recommend Af domain names, but but hopefully you'll walk away from this quick episode with And

Wes Bos

it's actually to register this domain name. And then there's like a tiny little asterisk that says renews at domain name registration is where who you actually pay money to to get your .com or .io or whatever. And then the DNS, like Vercel. And you have like, whatever Vercel. App, Online register at a buck 53 per year. Renew what was going on. I was I was really happy about that. And they actually, like, you know, like, with support, when you email back, you get, like, a Totally random person every time that has no idea what is going on. I actually got to email the same person back, and then, like, 2 days later, they followed up and Had all the data, so I was like, okay, their support was fantastic, Which is just the thing. So the first one, Namecheap. They've been around for a while. No bait and switch on their pricing, which is really nice. I tested out their chat and I had a real human talking to me in 10 seconds. I'm not even lying. So I was very impressed by that. Yeah. And Screenshot.west.

Scott Tolinski

is that, like, everybody's found just a slightly different way to do it. And I who knows why? Why is that a thing? Like, why why don't you just copy everybody copy 1 central way of doing it? But we'll often see slight variations in exactly how this all works.

Wes Bos

DNS dot online on hover. Because, like, could you just take the Some of them were like a dollar. And I'm curious,

Wes Bos

So there are companies that own Some registrars meaning that in domain names because it seems like everybody's not today. Nickel and dime in them. Yeah, But maybe they they just, like, kinda did a little bit of a cash grab Looks like in 2014, super good, negotiation that goes on and your domain name gets moved over.

Scott Tolinski

before you buy it. And I I was like, well, I I wonder how

Wes Bos

of trying to like, how much money did they make? on the Internet. I get people that message me, like, once a month about it, And when he was born, something where they just like a lot. I think small businesses But on the flip side, some of them are dirt cheap. Like I was on spaceship it needs to know what server like a Squarespace, rip through

Wes Bos

After And then it says renews at $22 a year, and they count on people just being like, alright, well, I'll

Wes Bos

to as few as I possibly could, You can get your email. Because I think the way that a lot of these registrars make money is not on the domain name. They make their money on you register the domain name there and then you say, Oh, well, would you like To hook up an email address. Would you like to throw up a quick website? That's why Squarespace wants it. Right? All these people with domain names. Hey. Hey. 1 of us used to make a lot of money on, like, SSL certificates and things like that. When you want a secure site, that's $250 anymore.

Scott Tolinski

and a lot of this will be our experiences and some research in general. So we have a number of options here we're going to be getting into. My name is Scott Tolinski. I'm a developer from Denver. And with me, as always, is Wes, boss.

Scott Tolinski

When dealing with DNS

Wes Bos

will operate businesses in those countries That's big stuff.

Wes Bos

putting all of your DNS in one spot so that anytime you're making changes, you have zero downtime. With the syntax domain name, I've been using I Want My Name domain name, do what's called the top level CNAME.

Wes Bos

operates some sort of we care. Yeah. It's the like, if you bought a granola bar or, like, something like that, green hosting or something like that. You'd have that font on there.

Scott Tolinski

To be able to become a domain registrar, and then you have to give them $3,500

Wes Bos

TLD because it makes sense for your business. And a lot of registrars All of the possible options. Whereas a lot of the other ones will, like,

Scott Tolinski

for the most part, you're applying to be able to sell these domains and you have to prove to them that you

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. There's there's like some it is funny. The one thing that you'll find

Wes Bos

they have to have a meeting Oh, okay. I trust you. Yeah.

Wes Bos

maybe go for it. Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Totally. Yeah.

Wes Bos

Register a domain name for you. So a lot of TLDs are country based, a year.

Scott Tolinski

websites or anything like that. In case, ICANN is,

Wes Bos

these days. I don't think I've ever Media or Donut Registration or whatever. So they own House, and I'm just going to pick random ones right here.

Scott Tolinski

in any of these systems

Wes Bos

Other things to think about is What are they going to do? Are they going to Google Domains Me in If you're registering a domain in today, what would you pick, Scott? I personally

Wes Bos

Other things is, does it come with domain name privacy? That's pretty standard Because Zip was controlled by Google. You could never register 1 ever

Scott Tolinski

You also have to be aware of, like, bait and switch pricing,

Wes Bos

doing some research for this

Wes Bos

seen use a top level domain like West. Io is one that I have.

Wes Bos

and act as a proxy to hold it. So I have a Af Pretty pretty ready to to make a decision. So the first thing we have here is, You know? Like, if if you think about $38 a year, they, like, hold it for you and then give you access to it, which is kind of sketchy because

Wes Bos

I think since the last time we've talked about it, a lot has changed. A lot of prices have kind of come down. So we're going to be getting into

Wes Bos

their $38

Scott Tolinski

I I actually was, like, really interested about this because I always see any time domain stuff comes up on Twitter, people are like, well,

Wes Bos

with that, you know, when you sign up for a service, you want to put a custom domain on it.

Wes Bos

We've we've talked about specific types of domain names. I think I'm with 3 or 4

Wes Bos

do they support domain name flattening? 2011, I bought West. Io there because they were one of the first I picked up the phone and the people were, like, very technical, You know, like, they understood Alright. That's it. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Catch you later.

Wes Bos

reach an agreement with whoever owns that. Like. Tech is another one.

Wes Bos

your home address

Wes Bos

meaning that you may only register them if you have a business It's called domain name flattening. So Cloudflare specifically does a lot of them do now, proxy agreement either by themselves when we decided to name our kid that name.

Scott Tolinski

We're gonna be talking about some privacy

Scott Tolinski

which, you know, this used to be a bigger problem because it used to be less Places to get a a domain name, and they used to be all sleazier.

Scott Tolinski

Theoretically, it's not that intense. So you basically just have to have You have to meet the accreditation requirements. You have to become a, I mean, I remember GoDaddy being obviously the sleaziest of the sleazy in terms of Both still are. But also, like, you have to click no thanks to 8 8 different offers. It's like, would you like a back scratch with this $10,010,000?

Wes Bos

Which is by far the cheapest you can get a .com for anywhere.

Wes Bos

often, that is the same company, but it doesn't have to be. So when you have a a domain name, You set your name servers on your domain name. And, basically, k. Which is usually 35.

Wes Bos

Tech was a sponsor of ours for a long time. Big fan of the tech domain names. They have control over tech. Right. And anybody who wants to sell a tech, So, but they did say on Twitter the other day that they will support it by the end of the summer. Okay.

Wes Bos

A couple of bucks more it will renew at instead of you pay 7 and then it renews that 8.50, which is not a big deal, but also is a registrar, but I find their search really good. Like, I can search downtime. Or the other thing you do is you get the whole domain name in your new registrar.

Wes Bos

And the reason why sometimes these registrars don't offer all the TLDs is because they couldn't and DNS, Oh, yeah. If you if you increase it to 2 years, it goes up from 4 to $40.

Wes Bos

Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

domains? Right? How does that even how does that even happen? And turns out It's actually I I don't know.

Scott Tolinski

Like, no thanks. I don't want that. You just have to keep clicking no until you get to the thing. That that's what I always told people when you're registering a domain. Alright. You're gonna do it here, but just say no to absolutely everything that it tries to sell you on until you get to the real, you know, real checkout.

Wes Bos

At least, you know, there's 1 spot where you can go and log in Yeah. I don't know if I own any dev.dev at spaceship.com.

Scott Tolinski

and it's gonna see everything in one spot. Yeah. And that makes sense. I, you know, I I tend to not do that, but It's like I I do it on a per case basis, but you're right. You should just probably have all all your DNS in the same spot. That makes way more sense. Yeah. I you You can't get away with only doing 1 registrar because a lot of these registrars don't offer

Scott Tolinski

and then is the Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers, the ICAN.

Scott Tolinski

We're gonna be talking about some UX stuff. We're gonna be talking about some DNS based features.

Wes Bos

TLD offerings.

Wes Bos

Restaurant

Wes Bos

Sometimes if you want to use a service or do you want, Like, you know, they'll try to suggest

Topic 1 33:08

Domain name search tools

Wes Bos

and the ones that are taken. I don't care. I just want to

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. You're right. Because I even just on domainer right now, it gives you, like, 6 options.

Scott Tolinski

who graciously

Wes Bos

I literally messaged

Wes Bos

I gave her son free courses for life, They got that shit about. GoDaddy has that, like, font.

Wes Bos

Also,

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. And and luckily, let me just say,

Wes Bos

on Cloudflare on Hover. And when we joined Century, part of that was we had to give Century the syntax out of him domain name,

Scott Tolinski

I like

Wes Bos

which is the name of 1 of my son. One of my son. My son.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. But my that's the only one I use.

Scott Tolinski

d o n. I pretty much always domainer.

Wes Bos

Yeah. I own HitBoss.com,

Scott Tolinski

I really like their management features.

Wes Bos

on, or where email should go to. Those are MX records or And then there's a button that says hide unavailable domain names, and they will you wait a couple of seconds, but they'll populate

Scott Tolinski

that was suggested to me by a syntax listener And turn off your hand blocker. It's like I know more than you. Please stop.

Wes Bos

And then I have all my kids names. And I told that story once. Right? Let Tucows owns Ting, which is like a, you could use that to

Scott Tolinski

That needs to be a name. Is the domain name as important as it was Once before, I don't think it is. It's important as it used to be. The handle what's important. Good point. Although, you know, we we did talk about, like, blue sky and some of these new,

Wes Bos

how many domain names do you have? Should I count? domain names via an app, don't ever do that. That's that's a weird thing where, like, you sign up for, like,

Scott Tolinski

One of them is

Scott Tolinski

am going to be Picking Cloudflare.

Scott Tolinski

$27,000. It's like, no. Yeah.

Wes Bos

things If something I get to keep So Hover is offering Five SSL certs, which who cares anymore about that? Is it a VPS? Is that what it is or what? Yeah. It's a VPS.

Scott Tolinski

Cloudflare's UI.

Wes Bos

hover, and say, I want to move this domain name.

Wes Bos

So I was really happy that we could snag that because I have all of my kids protection stuff. I know a lot of people don't like Cloudflare

Wes Bos

when they're older, or is it gonna be like, Why didn't you get me your TikTok name? You know? Yeah. Why didn't you register dot TikTok? You know? And, like, Do they offer team client access although it sounds like Porkbun is probably another very good option Yeah. For that type of thing. And then also, $20 what do you need to look for in a registrar? had If you register your domain at a specific registrar, you don't necessarily have to use their see what's available to me. Interesting. Like, let's see. What's Scott?

Scott Tolinski

the rest of them there. So, yeah, I I think that's really what it's gonna be for me is moving them to to Cloudflare. I you know, I could be convinced of other ones as well as well. But

Wes Bos

quite a bit lately. I used to always use this one called domainer, came on Twitter, what the renewal cost is? a year for the basic SSL. You know? I forgot about that. Yeah. That was probably a big a big business for them before that sort of thing went away. But so the the spaceship thing here, They're just putting a fresh coat of paint on it for hosting and making it like a one stop shop kind of deal, maybe. Yeah. That's probably what it is. Because, like, who's going to their domain and register to build a website? You know, not me. Nobody. Yeah. So maybe they're starting their own thing. Spaceship.com is pretty sweet domain name. It's a good domain name. Yeah. If you're a domain holder, the domains are Cheap as hell, too. They're cheaper than Cloudflare, which I was surprised.

Scott Tolinski

But now I do have to migrate yeah. Alternatives was a slimy company for most of my career, and they were often

Wes Bos

there are people on the Internet who just acquire that domain and be like, LOL, I got it. Yeah. I got I got sniped on 1 recently, and I'm I'm a little bit upset about it. Yeah. So thank you for that. But I didn't think to to grab it. That's That's the other thing is, like, you might think, oh, it's not a big deal, but, like, I probably have online for 4.99 take the dollar and then move it move it over to hover? and their price.

Wes Bos

Let's have a fun. Oh, you got Such a good domain name recently. What? Tolinski?

Scott Tolinski

I like just the general flow of it, and I use their product for everything.

Wes Bos

That was the only one that was not available That's not because of them. It's because of whoever they have To pay it to. Have you ever heard of 101domain.com?

Wes Bos

and TypeScript dot church, you know, and you can just, like, TV ads or And until they opened it up via Google domain names a couple of weeks ago. And, like, how many .zip domain names were registered in, like, 1 week? Probably probably 60 domain names in total. So it's it's not cheap, you know? And it's kind of a bummer because, like, a lot of them are just similar idea is another one is hover, and I have used hover for and I was very happy about that. But you can't always get them into just one because of the like, not a not significantly cheaper than the other ones, but the the prices are always just as good as the rest of them. Yeah. And and this, it seems like as long as the prices aren't bad, They're usually that's,

Wes Bos

Important.

Wes Bos

I have dot. The big one is Donut trying to be Io. And I was like, no, I want to use straight up west. Io.

Wes Bos

like, trying to sell you something. I think they probably make a lot of their money off of affiliates, I think. Yeah, I think they make a massive amount of money on it. Which is funny because I want my name So can you renew a domain name for $4? Probably not. It's probably that initial registration that's only cheap. Be careful for those $1 domain names. They are not a dollar in the long run.

Scott Tolinski

Since I already have so many at Cloudflare, it's like, well, I might as well move them to the spot where I have the most of them and a service that I like. Yeah. Big fan of Cloudflare. That's where I go. By default, I go to Cloudflare.

Wes Bos

to to what I've done before.

Wes Bos

I want my name in their search.

Wes Bos

Like, desirable

Scott Tolinski

I probably have

Wes Bos

And I was like, hey. Like, you're not using this domain name. She was it's just being redirected.

Scott Tolinski

So all of my most important and most beloved Domains have been already living on cloud for there already anyways.

Topic 2 00:33

Google Domains is closing

Scott Tolinski

A lot of people just had the Rogue pulled out from under them with the announcing of Google Domains closing. So if you are just hearing this for the 1st time and you have domains on

Scott Tolinski

by Squarespace

Scott Tolinski

Google Domains. Well, they have been acquired a registrar Shopify is. Probably massive. Same with Ioan, like, Squarespace and all those, right? Yeah. He's out there. Imagine

Scott Tolinski

becoming a Squarespace customer unless you move your domains off of Google Domains. So we figured what a perfect time to do an episode on domain registrars.

Scott Tolinski

and that means over the next x amount of months, you are going to be,

Topic 3 12:07

Overview of top domain registrars

Wes Bos

And then notes,

Wes Bos

But I thought your little table here that you put together was neat, Wes. Yeah. So we just kinda said, here's the the big ones that people are Commending, I asked on Twitter what people are using, and then I went through and said, like, how much is the .com? How much is the IO? I'm not going to rattle through it because almost always I've heard of people using them for years. So it's not Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Like, I know Cloudflare doesn't have .dev domain names.

Wes Bos

It tries to run you through some sort of stupid knowledge base, they had it. You know, like, it's Your client says, oh, yeah, I registered it here. And I think that's a lot of these companies

Wes Bos

Just run into, which is the syntax domain name, which is like, how do I let Scott

Wes Bos

The prices are within a dollar or 2. Not enough that it would ever matter, episode, You mirror the entire DNS to your old one.

Wes Bos

give you an AI answer, and then Give you a contact form, which they'll email you back in 3 days. You know? Yeah. Long contact form is really what those are.

Wes Bos

to that type of stuff?

Topic 4 24:26

Name.com has old UI

Scott Tolinski

their jQuery,

Wes Bos

SSL certificate from them. But So, like, a couple of years ago, I moved. I was like, alright, I have domain names of probably 7 or 8 different registrars.

Scott Tolinski

you know, it was fine at the time, whatever, but they put a Fresh coat of paint on it. And and sometimes there's, like, really bad UI

Wes Bos

I bought a a year, You get 2 gigs of memory, it's one of those cool people.

Scott Tolinski

given that it has not like, it got a a slight product coat of paint on it. But they were one where Grey sucks. It it everything about it sucks now. And, like,

Wes Bos

Opened up as a registrar.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. Nice UI for I guess you would say brand fixing

Scott Tolinski

And then I debugged are, able to meet that accreditation

Scott Tolinski

So I I'm in the process of moving my stuff off of there. And the only reason why I have domains there at all. It's because I had too many to start with there, and I just haven't taken the moving a domain is obnoxious. It's an obnoxious process. Yeah. I a couple of years ago. So I just went on Name .com and logged in. In the the A lot of DNS, like fancy and more complex DNS features

Scott Tolinski

and I was like, oh, yeah.

Scott Tolinski

2011. And I'm I'm not necessarily feeling that same way anymore, where, like, your domain could very well end up becoming your

Scott Tolinski

UI progress bar on their site and was on their chat with them and being like, hey, your

Scott Tolinski

It felt very 1990 in terms of everything.

Scott Tolinski

Process is failing because of a a error in your JavaScript code. I'm seeing the error. It's a jQuery error, and here's the error. And they were just like,

Scott Tolinski

domain registrar for a little while. And I've since basically been moving everything to Cloudflare. We can talk about Cloudflare next, But name .com is one of those ones. They're they're like a Colorado based company. You know, they had a nice UI in 2011,

Scott Tolinski

your

Topic 5 13:18

Namecheap has fast support

Wes Bos

So, like So,

Wes Bos

They are offering you should check it out. Spaceship.com.

Wes Bos

that's suspiciously cheap.

Wes Bos

Mhmm. And then cool dot I o was 35 Squarespace Wix.

Scott Tolinski

and I I probably wouldn't even consider them for a second, and shake hands with those people and It'd be approved as, like, a reseller for those specific domain names. Yeah. And some of them, like, I think it was I don't know if it's One of one of them recently that I really wanted was, like, owned by Dish Network. Like, some of them are just owned by

Wes Bos

3 just over $3 a month?

Wes Bos

And I asked him, hey, can you run note on these things? He said, yeah. So just it's important to understand the difference between a .net or something like that. But 3 times the price. So some of them are like Your domain name will be locked from being transferred. So if you unlock it, you get what's called a move code. And basically, just go to your next registrar

Wes Bos

Wix and Shopify competitor, Exactly.

Scott Tolinski

Oh, wow. I'm getting an access denied. I bet it's because of my VPN. That's probably because you're trash talking them.

Scott Tolinski

or

Scott Tolinski

The hosting bit from their domain product. Because on the back end, it it's probably using the same tech to manage their domains

Scott Tolinski

GoDaddy

Wes Bos

Often, you you should shop around for them. Or in my case, I just usually go to Cloudflare and you know that they're not gonna which is crazy. But because I registered boss dotaf edit the DNS of syntax.fm? What a domain name goes to

Wes Bos

You get 20 gigs SSD, So even the renewal be adding your values into it. Or, like, if you wanted people to register Not that where you could register domain names from them, but you could move them. Now you can register domain names.

Scott Tolinski

And I want my name. Oh, so that's

Wes Bos

It was, like, $6.60.

Wes Bos

5 years from now? One of the big things they have an API that you can use to manage your domain name. So if you're running like a multi tenant app, something And then, allow you to, hopefully, some of you guys upgrade to other ones. So What's important? What's not important? How much should you be spending? funny ones to you that are never very good. So I've been a big fan of Something that I you want that I had to keep logging in and updating my credit card. And, like,

Scott Tolinski

Daddy. But, like, honestly, I don't necessarily feel like they're that different of a company, Yeah. Interesting. One thing to mention is that you use the domain cool with several o's as the dot I o, And I thought that was pretty cool of you. Yeah. I was just trying to find, like,

Wes Bos

300,000

Wes Bos

But essentially, it's you buy a domain name there. You can get your hosting.

Wes Bos

was Like $0.30 cheaper than Cloudflare, which is who cares? But a hell of a lot.

Wes Bos

Fifty MySQL databases, and then you go up to their most expensive plan,

Scott Tolinski

And,

Scott Tolinski

pushing out. But you're right. Why is this a separate product? Is it just to differentiate

Scott Tolinski

where Yeah. They were all over Twitter. It'd be like, no. We've changed.

Wes Bos

So the the CEO of Namecheap their bread and butter. They get somebody in there, they get their email hooked up, And they're in there for life because TypeScript dot gay is available and TypeScript dot Africa they certainly could do. It's kind of scary how big Where to register domain names in the past. And DNS? Personally, I think they are Let's search for Scott.

Wes Bos

5 subdomains versus when I registered with it, and it is really frustrating. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna move everything to Cloudflare because

Wes Bos

files. Well, that's not enough to npm install anything.

Wes Bos

Namecheap.

Scott Tolinski

They GoDaddy also has fake chat, so don't go to GoDaddy. Yeah. Number 2 on the list was GoDaddy. And you know what? suggested it without acquiring it. So thank you for that because the company that's in charge of basically the entire DNS system and ensuring that, like, domain names are unique. Yeah. But also, like, which TLDs get added, which top level domains even exist, and who gets access to them. So ICANN is the The big boss here. A couple of years ago, whenever they opened up the ability, like, you know how we have anything Who is sitting there and being like, yeah, that is it. That makes a lot of sense. Let's do it. Like that to me is such a bad idea. I wonder if it was just them like,

Wes Bos

except for GoDaddy.

Wes Bos

everywhere.

Wes Bos

To somebody else and Yeah. Then it gets real expensive.

Wes Bos

that I could run through All of them? Because sometimes you put in I put a dot I o in, and it was said it was $68 or subdomains, One core, 1 gig of memory,

Scott Tolinski

really deemed as the The slimiest of the slime balls. But then at some point, they were really trying hard to do some major brand.

Wes Bos

What's the other big one? What's the one that Google has sold it to? Squarespace.

Wes Bos

what, a couple bucks a month? And then there's some backroom Hey. Yeah.

Wes Bos

they're obviously taking a hit somewhere. So that's another thing to think of. Okay,

Wes Bos

unlimited databases, up to 4 cores of CPU.

Wes Bos

There's a reason why they're suspiciously cheap because they're

Wes Bos

everywhere

Topic 6 28:13

How to transfer domains

Scott Tolinski

But you you pay like $30 a month and then you get a whole bunch of Extra features. And, you know, at the time when I use them, which was, you know, 10 years ago or so, they did things that nobody else was doing. Now I have no idea what that Looks like today, but I found them to be like a really interesting service. Yeah. This does look really nice. So they have an API. Like, Here's the the one time the one time savings that you get. Because I I do I I don't mind a sale on the 1st year if you make it obvious that it's, You know, multiple

Scott Tolinski

and, like, stuff before that you couldn't do elsewhere. And they were like the first ones for me that did Automatic SSLs and, like, weird alias,

Wes Bos

You could And I was like, oh, man. So, like, we worked out. I paid her good money for it. And then

Wes Bos

So finding domain names.

Wes Bos

move it random ass companies. Yeah. Like, Google owned dot

Wes Bos

And then when you're ready to cut over, you switch your name servers,

Scott Tolinski

I am are because of the way our redirects and SSL had worked with Apex Domains, it was impossible for me to move to

Wes Bos

could make use case of that. But the way it works is you unlock your domain name. So by default,

Scott Tolinski

A redirect

Scott Tolinski

h t t p s. There was like a weird thing. And they were the only ones that did it for some weird reason. So, we had to use DNS simple for a little while until,

Scott Tolinski

I think it was like

Wes Bos

I I said, hey. Like, we're going to give you the domain name, but don't change the name servers. Like, let us, me and Scott, still control the The DNS for syntax. So that way we don't have to go through some, like, process to They show you the ones that are for sale Moving DNS is where you could possibly have I'm there.

Wes Bos

You can move a domain name at any time. You usually have to pay for 1 year, but that 1 year just gets tacked on to whatever you have. So if you have 9 months left at a different registrar

Scott Tolinski

that don't that whatever that,

Wes Bos

to it was like a woman from Denmark or something.

Scott Tolinski

DNS records, stuff that you couldn't do anywhere else. Like, for instance, I I ran into a situation where Okay. That makes sense. They also own

Wes Bos

baby. Don't switch your DNS just yet that you have both of those exactly the same. And when you do a cutover,

Wes Bos

and you move to a new one, Cloudflare

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. Which we do. Yeah. Have you ever so there's also I want my name, which you have listed as like a finder, but they also do registry there. And then, DNS simple is kind of like an oddball one because DNS simple, their whole thing is that we give you for a full archive of all of our shows.

Wes Bos

and is verified or whatnot,

Scott Tolinski

level up tod's h t t p s to ww.leveluptutorials features and Pricing is important on top of all of that,

Wes Bos

domain name is in some weird app. And, like, What are the chances that they have, like, full when a website needs to look up or not necessarily a website, when anything needs to figure out

Wes Bos

Some service, and they're like, woah, we can add a domain name for you, but then your But Cloudflare is saying we're going to do domains at cost,

Wes Bos

take advantage of these, like, It's kind of good because we're not offering

Wes Bos

you and he's like, hey. You guys check out spaceship Do they have a fake chat where you click the chat button?

Wes Bos

is that moving a domain name, you do not need to wait until it renews.

Wes Bos

You're going to be at a year 9 months on top of there, so don't don't wait. And, also, some like, I know a lot of people There's so many other products that you pay for, so Getcha on that type of thing.

Wes Bos

I know Shopify does that. Like, I wonder how big of

Wes Bos

You register it with them, and they're going to ask you for that code. You paste that code in the box,

Wes Bos

is

Scott Tolinski

I don't know, caching that happens for Yeah. Permanent redirects went away. So I I moved off them since then. The reason that's kind of weird is because you're they're like a subscription based service, so you can't even go and hunt to see how much their domains I would imagine their standard prices. I've never purchased a domain out out through them.

Scott Tolinski

from That whole process works of how do you become a storefront selling

Topic 7 41:29

Overview of top registrars

Scott Tolinski

Nothing that gives Name .com. I just I just you know, I got I got charged for privacy. Who is Stefan there? In the you know, it's 2023. I don't need that in my life right now. So Mhmm.

Scott Tolinski

Name .com, I would probably migrate. I'm gonna migrate some of mine.

Scott Tolinski

Head on over to syntax.fm That seems suspiciously cheap. I'd never, never seen this before, that Twitter mentioned before. Yeah. So it's interesting to know if this is something they're gearing up to start, like, really

Scott Tolinski

And don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player

Scott Tolinski

or drop a review if you like this show.

Wes Bos

Peace.

Topic 8 38:17

Best registrar recommendations

Scott Tolinski

I Have Estelinski .dev there. I have Scott with three t's .dev.

Scott Tolinski

having the dot dev domains was like a big reason why

Wes Bos

like, offering it at a cheaper rate For TypeScript.

Wes Bos

25.80.

Scott Tolinski

my domains over there are .dev really is what it comes down to. So you you have to basically show that you have the technical expertise and financial stability

Scott Tolinski

it was it was interesting to me that there is not, like, there's not some, like, magic carpet,

Scott Tolinski

answer out there. There's not like something that we've never heard of that somehow better than everything else that, you know, just towers above the competition.

Wes Bos

They're probably, but unfortunately, some of them say, oh, you have to use, like, And probably another They're a Canadian based company.

Scott Tolinski

That,

Scott Tolinski

it's gonna be just a onetime sale or, like, a onetime sale price. And then what does hold on. Let's let's search for

Wes Bos

so this is a

Wes Bos

spaceship.com

Wes Bos

Net. The dotaf domain name is not as funny when you're shelling out $200 a year. Yeah. LOL. Af.

Scott Tolinski

So you're getting hit. Come on. But yeah. Don't don't fall for that. Unless they make it, like, very obvious that it's like, here's the, you know, I did not try their chat, but, again, the price is, 40. Let's see here. I that I have mine spread out amongst, like, 5 different services. So registrar options that we're gonna be talking about in this episode. And I'll be sure to mention which ones I've used and which ones I haven't when we have.

Scott Tolinski

Alright. Well, that should be it for domains here. Yeah. I I thought this was really eye opening. You know,

Scott Tolinski

All

Scott Tolinski

If you're on

Wes Bos

Thumbs down for part of spaceship.

Wes Bos

If it's not available, I'll go to Hover,

Wes Bos

Does Hover say .coms. But, like, I don't know. Like, is the .com gonna be A little bit when I'm ready. And then and then the the renewal comes around, you're like, pay the man, and I don't wanna deal with this right now. That's exactly what they do.

Scott Tolinski

Right. So let's search for it. Can you take the dollar and then move it immediately? Welcome to Syntax. In this Monday, hasty treat, we're gonna be talking about domain registrars.

Scott Tolinski

seems like that, you know, that that will be a big thing for a lot of people because I know that's, like, the big reason why a lot of people went to Google Domains in the first Besides it being a great little interface and all that stuff, but,

Topic 9 18:50

GoDaddy has poor UX

Wes Bos

I don't know. I've never heard of Tucows until making the Internet better since 1993. So I learned to code on Tucows.

Wes Bos

a developer don't allow maybe this isn't a registrar. This is a DNS thing is if you want to Friendly company, you know, like, because I guess, like a a cheap Or is this actually what it is? Sometimes these new companies that are suspiciously cheap, a one domain name that was available So I have,

Scott Tolinski

I know. This is one of those ones that I feel like I've been to the site before just to always check, but I've never bought anything from ever in my entire life. So, yeah, just curious if it was, like, one that you've ever used. One that we saw come up quite a bit in the Twitter Reds was pork bun, which Yes. Again, pork bun is not one that I had heard of before, That's fun.

Wes Bos

They've been great. They have a really nice back end. They allow you to have a single account and switch between businesses.

Wes Bos

Next one is Gandhi. Gandhi is a very popular option because they offer literally

Wes Bos

What was 2Cows or what is 2Cows? on a domain name, but it's pretty standard now that it comes with free Privacy. I wouldn't even Think twice about a registrar that doesn't offer free domain name privacy.

Scott Tolinski

It's like the one with, like, the, the Cloudflare or Hover or Porkbun or whatever, you know, the Namecheap, those are all probably gonna be fine for you. If you're on,

Wes Bos

I've known about them. I've never used them, but I've heard of them for me make sure I still own it before.

Wes Bos

You know that font that's like go to Godaddy.com and look at the font right now. I can't. It's like the and their prices 6 on Gandhi and

Wes Bos

yours is still going to be

Scott Tolinski

data company. What's it called? Oh, it's spelled t u c o w s. Yeah. I was looking for, like,

Wes Bos

because and studio.

Scott Tolinski

but the whole Google Domains thing. And, they were very active on Twitter. A lot of people, you know, really praising pork bun,

Wes Bos

I've never found a dome. Gandhi is usually where you go when you can't find a red star that supports the TLD, You had to, like, be like, oh, is this a good is this a good price or not? Or are they just, like, going to renew it at a ridiculous amount Yeah. A lot of the ones I looked into are not a lot of them, but they will say, oh, it's $20 I used to really love it, but I find that they they're going hard 53

Wes Bos

in Canada. And I've always been a big fan. Hover is the only company on this list that will pick up the phone, Decent. The Af domain name is really expensive, but that's not there.

Wes Bos

Their emails are really good. So I got an email from them saying, hey, there's some sketchy stuff that could happen. Like, if you get hacked and somebody moves your domain name, You know, then it's very hard to get that back. So I just rattled through a list of some of the more popular ones, Can I buy it off of you? And she's like, my son takes your courses. Oh, my gosh.

Wes Bos

and The kind of important thing to note is If you want no downtime I get to keep it. And Gandhi, the registrar I have, but it is important for things like do they have to factor auth? Do they have phone support? And it looks like I had bought a bunch of SSL certificates over the years as well.

Scott Tolinski

and it it seems nice. Free who is free SSL, things going on. But other times, like, you know, the process of Buying a SSL certificate, which is something I've had to do through them before.

Scott Tolinski

the same or Less is $34 for cool.

Wes Bos

which is amazing.

Scott Tolinski

Io. So, you know, same as everybody else here, a little bit less. Yeah. Porkbans seems like Mhmm.

Wes Bos

Yeah.

Wes Bos

cell phone carrier in the States. It's not here in Canada. It's hilarious. It's a Canadian company, but they don't offer

Wes Bos

and I'm able to switch between the 2. Their billing is really good.

Scott Tolinski

the dash lines.

Scott Tolinski

the number 2 cows. Ting.

Wes Bos

I don't wanna switch my email. You need a domain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Wes Bos

I Very They're listening.

Wes Bos

The warning tape kind of many times in my WordPress days, I used 101 domain Which you can you can no longer register a dotaf domain name anywhere domain name

Wes Bos

a, like, mobile with the.coms. A couple of bucks here doesn't matter, but the other ones, To all of these registrars.

Scott Tolinski

Email forwarding, all that stuff.

Topic 10 27:00

Cloudflare has cheap domains

Wes Bos

It's very, very simple to move over. And I think the thing to know

Wes Bos

At least having your DNS on Cloudflare is really nice if you're doing any of the DDoS What do they renew at? Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Dot online. Oh, yeah. See,

Wes Bos

which is pretty awesome because Because there's this massive Or through something else through Afghanistan where just register it with them and then immediately But kind of on the same domain names. They're expensive. Yeah. That's that's a problem with some of these. It's just like, oh, It's fine to spend $10 a year on you hope and pray Sometimes registrars don't allow you to that was pretty cool that they did that. And also having your domains, The font that says, like, we're healthy and we're better and Zip.

Wes Bos

services.

Wes Bos

which is like, I guess you got guess you got to be careful with big companies like that that control They're offering scroll down to their hosting plans.

Wes Bos

force behind the Internet,

Scott Tolinski

slog? I want my name. It's also $69.

Wes Bos

a good chunk of the actual Internet.

Wes Bos

they have so many other products that will before that got implemented, do you it's not taken, but do you want Max typescript.com, And there was some issue with transferring it. Like, it was locked even though I unlocked it. So

Wes Bos

they're like, okay, well, we're going to eat money on this Like, 1 domain name personally registered and then a bunch registered under my business,

Wes Bos

But they've Never wronged me, at least not yet. And I'm a big fan of all Cloudflare I use Linux. You know, which and now I was able to get it. And, like, it's kind of funny because It's that domain name is no good to anybody unless your name is Kit Kit Boss. Yeah.

Wes Bos

I use quite a few myself, big fan of all their workers and whatnot, so I was happy to move most of my domain names over there. I still have a bunch on Hover, and those are just TLDs that they don't offer at all. What is in general the process This is for you for migrating 1. Is it just doing or you don't it's not immediate. You often have to wait, like, 60 or 90 days. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Topic 11 00:00

Transcript

Announcer

Monday. Monday. Monday.

Scott Tolinski

key.

Announcer

soft skill, web development, the hastiest, the craziest,

Announcer

Boss, and Scott

Announcer

Open wide dev fans. Get ready to stuff your face with JavaScript, CSS, node modules, barbecue tips, git workflows, breakdancing,

Announcer

the tastiest CS web development treats coming in hot. Here is Wes, Barracuda,

Topic 12 23:19

Hover has phone support

Scott Tolinski

like in there's a good tier and then there's a medium tier and then there's a bad tier. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't used hover before, but it's one that I've heard as being a good option.

Scott Tolinski

One of them that I have used for quite a bit was named .com, and I I still have quite a bit on namedot because that was my, like, primary,

Wes Bos

I had some we had the syntax.fm

Wes Bos

are, like, registers to offer IO domain names.

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