Master of my domain

After spending several months pulling this website together I turned my attention to creating a web address. Bravely resisting the lure of lame puns and artsy-fartsy literary allusions, I settled on a straightforward “brucefelton-writer.com.” It had to be .com, I assumed, since I’m not an .org or .gov, nor do I qualify for any of those really cool country tack-ons, like .uk or .fr.

They’re called TLDs—Top Level Domains—and, it turns out, my choices were more varied than I realized. Every country on the planet, including half-melted ice islands in the Arctic Ocean and teensy nano-states like Nauru and Liechtenstein, is assigned its own TLD and many are available to foreign licensees. If you’re a brain surgeon or a celebrity rehab center, for example, Moldova will happily rent out its domain—.md—for use on your website. Similarly, Djibouti’s domain (.dj) has potential appeal for disk jockeys, Latvia’s (.lv) for Las Vegas operators, and Norway’s (.no) for cranky two-year-olds who've missed their nap.

Apparently, these places got the idea of marketing their domains from the island state of Tuvalu, which began renting out its domain—.tv—to media and communications companies in 1999. With barren soil, few natural resources and a seriously unpleasant human waste disposal problem, Tuvalu doesn’t have a lot going for it. .tv is pretty much it.

Also, the country may not be around much longer. It’s sinking into the sea.

Poking barely a few feet out of the Pacific, the nine volcanic atolls that make up Tuvalu are in danger of vanishing without a trace as climate change causes sea levels to rise. Part of the licensing proceeds fund research aimed at keeping the country above water.

Before clicking the button that would lock me into .com, I considered the upside of taking a less-traveled path. .tv, for example, would imbue my address with a classy edge, plus how often do I have an opportunity to give back to the Tuvaluans? But the $15,000 licensing fee was kind of a deal-killer, and none of the other domains seemed right. Certainly not the Bahamas (.bs), Bolivia (.bo), Bermuda (.bm) or the Falkland Islands (.fk).

Call me unadventurous, but in the end I stayed with my original sensible-shoes option. You can’t lose with .com.

So, welcome to brucefelton-writer.com. And thanks for reading this far.