The new domain for James’ Blog

If your the observant type then you might of noticed that the URL in address bar is no longer james-blogs.com but in fact jamesblogs.com, just noticed? You jumped out of your seat right? Well it’s not that dramatic, but yes the primary domain of James’ Blog has now changed. This was one of the main reasons why James’ Blog was taken offline while the new updates occurred, simply because all of the domain type stuff going on and keeping the blog online would of meant masses of 404 Not Found errors, which are not good. Anyway read more to find out what’s been going on with the new domain.

When I started this blog back in 2008, it annoyed me that I had to have james-blogs.com as the domain because the jamesblogs.com was taken. Well, I say taken but it wasn’t actually registered to any site, instead it was of those infamous domain snatcher type people that horde domains and then try to sell them for a ridiculous amount. A lot of people have asked me why I didn’t buy the domain jamesblog.com. Well for two reasons, one, it was taken (and believe it still is) but also I didn’t think it rolled off the tongue as much as jamesblogs.com but alas I was screwed either way as both were taken, so I had to add a dash and suck it up.

Well anyway last year around June/July time I noticed that the domain had expired and was pending delete. This was very good news as I had a chance to get rid of the annoying dash! During this discovery I also got approached by a company called InTrust Domains, who emailed me and said that the jamesblogs.com domain was expiring (probably because they noticed I had james-blogs.com) and said did I want to back order the domain through them. I’d never heard of InTrust domains so I decided to look them up and found a mixed view of opinions of their service. The word scam appeared a few times so I was put off considering doing business with them, so I decided to tell a white lie and say I wasn’t interested in the domain when in fact I was but I decided to play it down and see how things developed.

I got a couple more emails from InTrust Domains saying that it’s a “one time offer” or “this is your last chance” something along those lines anyway, but kindly responded and said I was not interested. By this point I had already gone to my usual domain registrar, name.com and placed a back order for jamesblogs.com through their domain nabber service, and then the waiting game began. I placed the back order about a week before the deletion of the domain and literally just kept checking the My Account page on name.com several times a day to see if I’d got it. On the 7th July 2010 I got an email from name.com saying the back order was successful and I’d got the jamesblogs.com domain! I had a massive grin on my face when I read that email, who knew someone could be so happy about a TLD domain name? Well I was and was chuffed to bits!

You may or may not have noticed but the jamesblogs.com domain was actually setup as a Domain Pointer for the rest of the year. If you went to jamesblogs.com it would take you to the blog but as soon as you clicked anything the domain would change back to the james-blogs.com domain.

The back story on InTrust Domains

So after I’d secured the domain I decided to go check out InTrust Domains further. From the various articles, reviews and blog post about them, I found that they are a company that basically watches expiring domain names and look for people that have a similar domain name registered. It explains why they contacted me because they obviously made the connection that I own james-blogs.com and thought that I might want jamesblogs.com and they were correct I did. I won’t show the emails that I got sent but the summary of them was basically that they knew jamesblogs.com was expiring soon and they said they could secure it for a fee of $97. Now alarm bells start ringing when a back order from name.com was only $49.95. A hefty $47.05 more, but not only that InTrust Domains couldn’t secure it, well at least not be 100% of securing it. InTrust Domains basically implied that they could secure it like a guarantee, but in actual fact there would be no stopping anyone else using a normal registrar like name.com, namecheap.com, godaddy.com etc and purchasing the domain at the normal price. They probably hoped that their way with words would lead me to use them to snatch the domain when it expired, but I didn’t, I used name.com where 90% of my domains are purchased through already.

What’s happening to the james-blogs.com domain?

The james-blogs.com domain is going no where! All the articles, posts and links are all under the james-blogs.com domain right now so It would be silly to remove it! What I’ve done is setup james-blogs.com as permanant 301 redirect. Which means if you go james-blogs.com you automatically get redirected to jamesblogs.com. But that’s not all. I’ve also setup the james-blogs.com to redirect any requests made to it and seamlessly redirect to the jamesblogs.com domain. This means that if you made a request like james-blogs.com/about it would automatically be redirected to jamesblogs.com/about. This is the same with all content, like posts and articles. For example going to one of my tutorials that’s linked to the james-blogs.com will redirect to the jamesblogs.com URL. So no 404 Not Found errors should occur! Which is good news as I hate getting 404′d, even on my own blog! If you do spot any links that don’t redirect to the correct location then please let me know and I’ll sort them out right away!

Enjoy the dash-less domain!