3 months ago I embarked on a mammouth task to streamline all my online business and personal activities. I have so many domain names that I'd purchased in the past, but wasn't doing anything with them. Some how it felt like I was protecting the crown jewels by not giving them up. Lol. 'One day I might just do X, Y Z with that domain' I kept telling myself. But then I added them all up and realised I have 7 "SEVEN" domain names and only 2 of them are actually for something meaningful, plus 10 email accounts. You really have to question your own logical. Things just can't go on like this anymore. Lol.
So I gave myself an ultimatum. Come up with an viable idea for each domain and implement it in the next 9-12 months or loose the domain.
So here's my progress 3 months on:
Hosting:After much research, in June I purchased Deluxe Hosting plan at GoDaddy with the benefit of being able to host multiple domains in one hosting plan. I had used free basic hosting with various ISPs in the past, and had one paid-for hosting plan with Purple Cloud for the last 5 years. I think it was alright for personal websites and at £10 - £20 per year you can't really complain. But I felt I needed a much more stable and reliable service for hosting business websites. Here's hoping GoDaddy won't let me down. So far So Good. :-). Silly thing is I renewal on Purple cloud again just incase GoDaddy let me down (and because I didn't have enough time to migrate everything over to the new hosting service in time).
Domain 1 (My professional profile website) - This domain was lying around for years doing nothing apart from having an email account. Since I work in IT I thought it best to have a more professional profile of my skills and experiences. Plus it would give me more space to elaborate on things I have to keep short on my CV. I installed Word Press for this domain as it helps to keep my site clean and tidy. Hopefully this profile will get me a few job offers in the future too :-).
Domain 2 (silktrends.co.uk) - Already has a functioning website that I created 3 years ago for a Hair Salon business I jointly own, but the design is very basic (although professional) and isn't really that exciting. It at least does the job and provides key information about the salon and services available. Decided to redesign the site to make it a bit more user friendly, prettier and easier to maintain. Wordpress springs to mind again! :-). The new site will be re-launched soon.
Domain 3 and 4 (afrohairsalon.co.uk and .com): I purchased these domains as searchable domain names likely to be picked up by search engines for the hair salon business. Currently used for testing the new salon website I've designed (still under construction). Installed Word Press for this, with a few plugins, and designed a customised template for it. Will be released as the main Silk Trends website shortly.
Domain 5 (dcfhosting.co.uk) - This is purely used for development and testing of websites. Nothing much going on there at the moment.
Domain 6 (wheresithappening.com) - This was the first ever domain name I purchased back in 2002. Apart from assigning the domain to my hosting plan and pointing it my professional profile website (as something pretty to look at), not done much else. Lol.
Domain 7 (wheresithappening.co.uk)- Lord knows what happened to this one. Its currently parked even though I didn't request it to be :-(.
Emails:
Deleted a few mailboxes that were getting more spam than anything useful. Started to research the best place to host my business email, as need somewhere that has a decent web mail interface and includes pretty of storage space. Purplecloud's webmail just isn't doing it for me (very ugly interface and not that user friendly). Currently considering Google Apps or GoDaddy. But it really hurts me to have to pay for it to get decent size storage. Though as the saying goes 'you buy cheap, you buy twice'. Lol.
So there you have it, a little bit of progress but nothing to start popping the champagne about. Lol. There's just so much to do and so little time. If I'm going to beat my Ultimatum things really need to move on much quicker.
