# What I learned from 20 years of giving domains as Christmas presents

Canonical page: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains

- SlideShare title: What i learned from 20 years of giving domains
- Talk date: Not established
- SlideShare upload: 2021-04-21 (upload date, not the delivery date)
- Event: Not established
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- Topics: Teaching & technology
- Language: en
- Slides in the original listing: 19
- Coverage: Full text of all 19 slides, each paired with its original slide image (slide N is section N).
- Original listing: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/246641186
- Cover image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-01.png
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## Slide 1: What I learned from 20 years of giving domains as Christmas presents

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-1 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-01.png

Dominik.Lukes@ctl.ox.ac.uk

## Slide 2: Outline

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-2 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-02.png

1.  My story
2.  What you need to know
3.  What you need to avoid
4.  What to do with it
5.  Dilemmas
6.  What’s new

## Slide 3: My story

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-3 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-03.png

- 1998: www.cuni.cz/~dlukes
- 2000: bohemica.com
- 2005: dominiklukes.net
- 2010: strcprstskrskrk.com
- 2020: 30 domains later

## Slide 4: Metaphorhacker.net

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-4 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-04.png

![Screenshot of the Metaphor Hacker website, "Hacking Metaphors, Frames and Other Ideas", with its menu (About, Blog on Request, Metaphorhacker), a search box, and a list of posts beginning with "Why I am a feminist: A reading list" by Dominik Lukeš, March 8, 2021.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/media/img-652619e291174203.png)

## Slide 5: Why I own 30 domains

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-5 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-05.png

- Emails
- Websites
- Gifts
- Creative Writing

## Slide 6: Key concepts people don’t get

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-6 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-06.png

- Every web page is a file in a folder on a computer somewhere
- Every computer on the internet has a unique number (IP Address)
- Domains are verbal shortcuts

## Slide 7: From a presentation I did in 1998

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-7 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-07.png

![A 1998 slide in Czech on a spiral-notebook background, titled "Co vám řekne adresa (URL)" ("What does the address (URL) tell you"). It shows http://www.seznam.cz and http://www.microsoft.com with arrows labelled hypertext, organizace, země and doména, and top-level domains .uk, .ru, .sk, .edu, .org and .gov.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/media/img-93792d6624762235.png)

## Slide 8: Browsers are HTML file viewers

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-8 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-08.png

![A browser window: a tab titled example.html, an address bar showing a path to a file on the local drive, and the page text “This is an HTML file on my drive”.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/media/img-27cb9bf8bc400f2f.png)

![A file-manager window showing the folder “HTML test” with one file, example.html, a Chrome HTML Document of 56 bytes.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/media/img-649b38cf90485149.png)

## Slide 9: Web servers are just computers with folders

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-9 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-09.png

`https://myserver.com/index.html`

=

`https://myserver.com`

## Slide 10: Website address is a link to folders

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-10 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-10.png

`https://myserver.com/index.html`

=

`C://webserver/myservertopfolder/index.html`

## Slide 11: Sometime the file is in a database

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-11 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-11.png

`https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roffie-Microphones-Computer-Recording-Conference/dp/B0878VGZZ5/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1TJK0MT6QNWF3&dchild=1&keywords=webcam&qid=1589195310&sprefix=24+in+%2Caps%2C195&sr=8-5`

## Slide 12: Sometimes, there’s other information in the link

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-12 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-12.png

`https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roffie-Microphones-Computer-Recording-Conference/dp/B0878VGZZ5/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1TJK0MT6QNWF3&dchild=1&keywords=webcam&qid=1589195310&sprefix=24+in+%2Caps%2C195&sr=8-5`

**=**

`https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roffie-Microphones-Computer-Recording-Conference/dp/B0878VGZZ5`

## Slide 13: Top level domains are addresses of computers

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-13 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-13.png

`subserver.myserver.com/folderonmyserver/fileonmyserver.html`

**=**

`123.56.39.10:576/ folderonmyserver/fileonmyserver.html`

## Slide 14: What to know about domains

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-14 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-14.png

- Buy them via registrars
- Different TLDs, different prices, different rules
- Country TLDs are fun but expensive, capricious

## Slide 15: .tv .so .ly .it .co

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-15 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-15.png

![Screenshot of a Rest of World article, "Why domain names are the new natural resource", subtitled "Two letters at the end of a web address could be Tuvalu's economic future." by George Siosi Samuels, 15 December 2020, with a colourful illustration of a globe.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/media/img-dfbb819bebd89695.png)

## Slide 16: Lessons learned

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-16 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-16.png

- 10 years is nothing
- Separate domain and hosting
- Don’t let them expire
- Transferring is a pain
- Always think about moving

## Slide 17: Handy jargon

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-17 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-17.png

- DNS
- IP Address
- MX Record
- A Name and C Name

## Slide 18: What’s new

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-18 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-18.png

- Wordpress Competition
- Notion as a website host
- Cloudflare
- Reclaim Hosting

## Slide 19: Slide 19

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains#section-19 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/what-i-learned-from-20-years-of-giving-domains/pages/page-19.png

(The slide shows no title; the heading above is its contents label.)

- dominiklukes.net
- techczech.net
- metaphorhacker.net
- researchity.net
- czechly.com
- …

Collections: [Digital tools and open practice](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/?collection=web)