I actually wanted to write about this last week as part of my series on "Starting Your Own Blog," but there was already so much other stuff to say, this would have been too much. Besides, I think it's an important enough topic that it merits its own post.

You may not think that picking a name for your blog is that big a deal. In that case, you might want to check with my good friend Charmian Christie, who publishes one of the best food blogs out there: Christie's Corner. Note that it's not Charmian's Corner.

Now if Charmian's last name happened to be, say, Kricfalusi, she probably wouldn't have too big a problem. If you saw Kricfalusi's Corner, you wouldn't be too likely to think her first name is Kricfalusi. But given that her last name is Christie... well, you get the picture.

Charmian wrote a great post about how she ended up in this situation and her dilemma of whether or not to change it. (She didn't.) And luckily it hasn't actually hurt the success of her blog—a testament to her excellent content and fabulous writing style.

But to avoid a similar conundrum, I really think you should spend a little time thinking about what the purpose of your blog is—and what you hope it will grow into (if anything). If it's is designed mainly to share photos and updates with a small set of friends and family, you probably don't need to worry too much about what you name it—you can just use whatever user name you used to create your account. But if your goal is to use your blog as part of a larger branding initiative, i.e. it's tied to a company you started or a book you hope to write some day, you'll want to give a little more thought to the following questions.

Do you want your own domain name?

When you sign up with a blog host you get a URL that includes the name of that company in it. For example, this blog's "real" URL is techforluddites.typepad.com. That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue and is not particularly print-friendly. By that I mean, if you wanted to advertise your blog in a print newsletter or on a business card—anywhere you can't create a link to the blog—it's rather long and unwieldy.

Since I wanted to have the most flexibility, I went ahead and bought the techforluddites.com domain and "mapped" it to the default URL. (I'll explain more about mapping domain names later in this post.) And unless you know for absolute sure that you will never need it, I would recommend doing this for most people, mainly because domain names are so cheap—there are lots of places to buy them for under $10 a year. But then the question is...

What name should you buy?

This blog name is Tech for Luddites so I bought www.techforluddites.com. Makes sense, right? Unfortunately it's not always as simple as that because often the name you want is already taken by somebody else. So then you have to ask yourself, should you change your blog name so you can get a matching URL?

I'm actually a bit rabid about this. If your blog is the start of a brand new entity and you can't get the ".com" name to go with it... then yes, change the name of your blog. I actually had several other ideas for the name of this blog, but I rejected them all because I couldn't get the domain name to go with it. I can't remember most of them now (De-Techted was one of them...) but it took me a few weeks to finally find a name that I both liked and that hadn't been taken already. In fact, when I did think of it, I thought it was so perfect that there was no way it would be available...

Note I said the ".com" name, not the ".ca" or ".net" or ".info" name. I'm also pretty rabid about this. Except for ".org", ".gov", and ".edu", which are used for specific types of entities, the rest of them are completely valueless to me. If somebody sees your URL on a sign and walks away, they're probably going to walk away remembering the .com version of it, which may even take them to a competitor's site! (After all, if you have the same name, you may very well have the same type of business.)

Obviously, if you're creating the blog for an existing business or association, you're not going to change the name to match the URL. In that case, you might be able to make a minor change that will work. For example, for the example blog I created last week, I looked up coolestblog.com and it wasn't available. So I tried thecoolestblog.com and it was. (And actually sounds better I think...) So in cases like this, you'll need to be a little creative. And many of the domain registrars will offer up a list of alternative suggestions if the one you're looking for is taken.

How do you find out if the domain name you want is available?

According to Wikipedia, these are the top ranked domain registrars. If you go to any of their sites, there will be a search box somewhere that lets you enter the name you want and it will immediately tell you if it's available.

If you're setting up your blog on WordPress.com or Blogger, they both offer a service where you can look up a domain name and then register it and map it to your blog automatically. This is probably the best solution if you don't already own a domain name you want to use.

On WordPress.com, go to My Dashboard and click on Upgrades in the left-hand column. In the Add a Domain name, click Buy Now and follow the prompts. The total cost will be $14.97/year.

On Blogger, click Settings > Publishing and then click the Switch to Custom Domain link. They charge $10/year for the service.

If you register your domain name somewhere else (which you'll have to do with a TypePad blog), you'll have to "map" it to your blog's URL. I can't go into details here because each registrar has its own system. But if you have a specific question about how to do this for your own blog, feel free to send it along and I'll be glad to answer it.

What else should you consider?

Once you've decided whether or not you want a custom domain name and, if so, what that name should be, here are some other things to keep in mind.

• You don't want a name that's too long (again for print purposes), so you might want to consider using an abbreviation for the URL, even when you have the full name displaying on the blog.
• You might also want to purchase multiple related names just so no one else takes them. For example, American Airlines has both www.americanairlines.com and www.aa.com. I also own www.technologyforluddites.com, but unfortunately couldn't get www.t4l.com. :( Also, if there's something in the name that could have a common typo, it's not a bad idea to buy the "wrong" name as well and have it redirect to the right one. (Obviously there's a limit to the number of domains you want to buy, but you should at least think about it.)

• If possible, try to avoid using punctuation marks, like hyphens and apostrophes, in your domain name. For one thing, people may forget them and then not find your blog. For another, sometimes they get converted into weird code when an e-mail is sent out announcing a new post, etc. If you're worried about having a name with multiple words running together, you can always capitalize some letters when printing it, e.g. www.TechForLuddites.com, which makes it easier to read. (Domain names are not case-sensitive, so TechForLuddites.com is exactly the same as techforluddites.com.)

So those are my (lengthy) thoughts on the subject. What about you? Is there anything else you think people should think about before choosing a name for their blog? If so, please pass it along!

Posted in Blogging, How To, My Two Cents, Series, Social Media