You are not purchasing a web site! You are registering a domain name and server space, upon which you can build many web sites, amongst other things. Therefore, you need a domain name that will continue to work for you after this semester is finished, maybe even after you have graduated from Emory.

One possibility is for your domain to be some version of your name (i.e., davidmorgen.org, janestudent.net, or johndoe.com) but if you have a very common name you might have to be a little creative.

Maybe the best choice is to choose a domain name that is a short word or phrase that is easy to remember and spell, and which speaks to some interest of yours or an aspect of your character (for example, my friend Audrey Watters publishes a site called hackeducation.com; Kin Lane spends his careers working with APIs and his domain is apievangelist.com; or one of my favorite art and design blogs, which is called thisiscolossal.com). Then you can choose whether to put your name or a pseudonym on the title of the site(s) that you install at that address.

If you’re going to choose a title or phrase as your domain name, make sure you think about it very carefully so you don’t show up on one of those lists of the most unfortunate domain names ever, like the design firm called Speed of Art that ended up with a domain name that sounds like it’s about flatulence in a swimsuit.

Do not include the word “emory” in your domain name. The university brand management office is quite emphatic about trying to keep domains including “emory” only for official university sites.

Do not include my class name or something specific about a course, or even your major, in your domain name. I want you to think of this site as building your digital identity and as something that might persist beyond the class, so putting the class name in your site URL will limit you. You can refer to the class within the site that you build there, but not in the domain name.