A New Site Address Springing Up Everywhere!

Well folks, it's been a while, but I figure I'd start yammering here and see who stumbles on it.

My topic today? Internet web addresses, and when to change them.

Now, as a former fed runner myself, the most common theme among changing your web address is simple forgetfulness, or various legal issues standing in the way. In 2000, the IWO lost it's long time domain iwo-online.com for a year, and then we lost it again the next year. It's why we're currently on internetwrestling.org, which mind you, may be one of the longer names in the game today to have a dot com(Hell, it's not even a dot com, it's a dot org. I thought I would be clever.)

Now, recently, both CSWA and fWo, two long standing e-federations, have changed their web addresses. What gives?! Travis makes mention that the change is meant for fluidities sake, in a manner to make it easier for us to get to his product. Even still, on fwowrestling.com, he still retains a re-direct.

On the CSWA side, I stumbled upon the site one day to find it completely vanished. Only recently, in fact, minutes ago, in what inspired this blog post, did I find a new site for the CSWA, or perhaps just an archive, depending on Chad's approach, at thecswa.com. With Chad and the CSWA, I don't know exactly what caused the change either, but I can think to myself that it wasn't exactly a planned manuever.

But why change your address? I mean, personally, I think that just makes it harder for people to find you. Not only do you have to resubmit your federation to a various ever growing list of databaseses, but you've got to redirect server paths on scripts, perhaps even install better compatable versions even.

It's a lot of busy work to mitigate a site from one location to another. When restarting from scratch, in the fWo's case, I can see why not having the clutter of the old would be a benefit. For something like CSWA's, where everything remains the same, you've got to wonder if Chad always had this site as a back up, or if this was done recently when the domain expired without his knowledge.

So, who knows. I know that I handled at least five different site mitigations between 2000 and 2003, and ultimately, that was one of the most frustrating things a federation could go through. Every three months it seemed we had the unluckiest luck in the world. When you're fighting to stay online every other day, it might be best to switch domains. If you're retooling things from scratch, perhaps it's best to start on a new domain as well, but I'd argue, in either case, that getting a new server would be a better solution to both problems.

Bah. This is a ramble with no real point, just inspiration faded into nothingness. Still! It's a sign that I'm attempting to write in this piece, and we'll see what comes of it.

posted by Thomas Ford @ 3:12 AM 0 comments