---
title: "What I learned from 20 years of giving domains as Christmas presents"
author: "Dominik Lukeš"
outline_version: 2
auto_title_slide: false
auto_thanks_slide: false
---

## What I learned from 20 years of giving domains as Christmas presents
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Dominik.Lukes@ctl.ox.ac.uk

## Outline
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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

## My story
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-003}

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

## Metaphorhacker.net
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-004}

![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.](assets/media/img-652619e291174203.png)

## Why I own 30 domains
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- Emails
- Websites
- Gifts
- Creative Writing

## Key concepts people don’t get
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- 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

## From a presentation I did in 1998
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-007}

![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.](assets/media/img-93792d6624762235.png)

## Browsers are HTML file viewers
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-008}

![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”.](assets/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.](assets/media/img-649b38cf90485149.png)

## Web servers are just computers with folders
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`https://myserver.com/index.html`

=

`https://myserver.com`

## Website address is a link to folders
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`https://myserver.com/index.html`

=

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

## Sometime the file is in a database
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-011}

`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`

## Sometimes, there’s other information in the link
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-012}

`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`

## Top level domains are addresses of computers
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-013}

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

**=**

`123.56.39.10:576/ folderonmyserver/fileonmyserver.html`

## What to know about domains
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- Buy them via registrars
- Different TLDs, different prices, different rules
- Country TLDs are fun but expensive, capricious

## .tv .so .ly .it .co
{id=pptx-f33af88d3afb-015}

![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.](assets/media/img-dfbb819bebd89695.png)

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

## Handy jargon
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- DNS
- IP Address
- MX Record
- A Name and C Name

## What’s new
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- Wordpress Competition
- Notion as a website host
- Cloudflare
- Reclaim Hosting

## Slide 19
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- dominiklukes.net
- techczech.net
- metaphorhacker.net
- researchity.net
- czechly.com
- …