When I knew I was going to make this directory, of course, I had to come up with a domain name that sounded “searchish”. I went to my registrar and hunted around looking for inspiration.
Infoseek was the name of the first search engine I ever used on the Web back in the ’90’s. It was also the search engine I used to learn how to optimize meta-tags with. My first baby steps in learning SEO. I really liked old Infoseek and it’s too bad Disney killed it. Of course, Infoseek is Trademarked so it is unusable.
Hyperseek was the name of the first perl directory script I ever built a directory with. It was a beast to learn but it could do practically anything – very powerful and feature rich even by today’s standards.
So (Something)seek seemed fortuitous.
I didn’t want to use the full word/name “Indieweb” as that belongs to Indieweb.org and I know they kinda discourage it’s use for other purposes, so I tried to find a workaround for a directory of the Independent Web:
“Independent” was too long.
“Freedom” and variants sounded like a political liberation movement.
“Alt” has become associated with extremists of the Right and Left so that would not work at all.
“Libre” is used in computer software and hardware circles (ie. Libre Office) and that didn’t seem to fit very well.
I finally settled on “Indieseek” Indie for Independent Web + seek which is searchish.
The top level domain “.xyz” got chosen because because it was 1. general and not associated with one country or occupation, 2. short, 3.funky sounding, 4. cheaper than all the others.
And it turns out Indieseek is probably way better than DumpTheManseek.xyz or AntiSiloseek.com. Just saying.
Preserving this for posterity.
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@bradenslen A very good choice!
@bradenslen I like it! Found myself surprisingly happy with “.xyz” too, given the choices available. 🗂 👩🏽💻 🌎
@bradenslen I like that name. I too have an .xyz domain for my projects. Can’t say am happy — enterprizes hate that. But then it’s ok, it sounds, as you say, short, cool and is cheap. So 👍🏽.
@bradenslen 👍🏼
@bradenslen great name interesting project. Looking forward to burrowing in.
@Ron Thanks!
@grayareas Thanks! You are right .com is pretty well tapped out and some of the other “new” top level domains are very expensive.
@amit Thank you. Godaddy sure had it buried on their domain search. Truthfully, .xyz does not sound very businesslike. ICANN needs to come up with more business sounding top level domains the demand there is huge.
@jeremycherfas Thanks!
@johnjohnston Thanks John. I’m playing it by ear a bit to see what people are interested in. See what search terms are used, most used categories, clicks and that will give me an indication where to focus.
@bradenslen I’ve already found somethings I’d never normally see: ‘Zymoglyphic Museum’ & ‘Hypnosis and Mind Control in the Movies’ The first I’ll go back to, the second I am just somehow glad it exists.
@johnjohnston Thanks! I wish I could take credit for finding the Zymoglyphic Museum but Kicks Condor found it orginally and it was so cool I had to add it. Hypnosis… remember when the web was full of quirky sites like that? We’ve lost so much.
Feel free to add your websites if/when you feel comfortable doing so.