Hover: Domain names without the vampires

Okay, first things first: I wrote this article on August 25th. That’s important.¹

Now the disclaimer: I woke up on August 26th and found out that I won an iPad from Hover.

Now the clarity: I don’t get paid to blog. I’ve never been shy about writing articles about software and expecting nothing in return. I’ve written posts about desktop software such as Scrivener, web apps such as Posterous, and even web-based “service-like” companies such as Iterasi. I’ve even written about how amazing the Microsoft Visual Studio system is… and I freakin’ hate Microsoft anything. If I see something I like, I write about it. Hover is no different.

Hopefully, that’s enough evidence that I don’t write for return. I write because I love writing. If you don’t believe that, then you might want to move on.

Now the post

Hover rocks. Full stop.

I have a lot of domain names. I don’t have a lot of them because I sit on them hoping they will be worth something, I have working domain names. Everything from this site and johnmetta.com to organizational sites like RubyGorge to halfway joking web applications like kwisatz.hadera.ch.

Dozens of working domains, all pointing different places.

Anyone who has a lot of domains, or even many people that have a single domain, know that domain management can be a pain. For years, I’ve used GoDaddy.

Why? Because I love sticking needles in my eyes.

GoDaddy is run by vampires

GoDaddy has the tools I need. The problem with GoDaddy is that it’s worse than MySpace. I’ve had super savvy tech folks ask me how the hell to find simple DNS management tools on the GoDaddy website– and I’ve actually had to ask GoDaddy tech support myself. The answer is invariably something like this:

“You go here, click this link, go here, go there, oh, watch out for the minotaur, then go here… Now you’re on the Accounts front page, okay from there go here and…”

Trying to finding anything on the GoDaddy site is like trying to find a contact lens that you dropped on the dance floor of an 80′s throwback disco dance party… in a basement… with vampires.

Ugh.

I actually think that GoDaddy is run by vampires. And not those emo-goth-pussy-I-really-don’t-want-to-drink-your-blood-honest-I-don’t Twilight vampires either. GoDaddy people are violent-ass-Lost-Boys-bite-into-your-skull-with-fangs-and-throw-your-carcass-off-a-cliff vampires.

Or, rather, bite into your wallet with fangs. Whatever.

The main problem with that is that GoDaddy does it right. Their purpose is not to let you buy and manage domains. Their purpose is to make you buy everything else: “Would you like to add a personalized monkey voice to your new GoDaddy ‘email to fax to voicemail™’ service for an extra $9/month?”

To GoDaddy, management of domains is not a feature, it is an interesting byproduct of their vampire disco dance party sales strategy.

Laughter at a party

I first heard of Hover while at the Gnomedex conference. They were among the sponsors and one of the many announcements was “Go to Hover.com and register a domain name, use the code Gnomedex for a 50% discount and a chance to win an iPad.”² I didn’t think about them again until a bunch of us were chatting about funny stories of their childhood that all arose because no-one talked to us about sex.

I know, interesting topic, right. Wow, no possible negative ramifications there!

We were all laughing and telling stories about awkward things that happened to us as kids and Chris Pirillo said something like “this would make such a funny website: Stupid things I would not have done if someone had just told me what sex was.”³ Because we’re all laughing and drinking, I decided to grab my Android and go to the hover.com site and register a domain- after some wine infused suggestions, we all came up with wankmylife.com as the funniest name.⁴

Waking up to Hover

I only used Hover because we were at the Gnomedex party, and I did want to try to support Chris Pirillo by supporting the sponsors. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized what Hover really was.

Remember 1996? Remember going to Yahoo! to try to search for something?

“Is that the search box, or is that another blinking HTML tag telling me how to get a stupid monkey voice for my answering machine?”

Then you found Google. And you suddenly realized that you could breath again.

Google did one thing: Search.

It was beautiful.

Going from GoDaddy to Hover was much the same experience. It was like a breath of fresh air. I’d registered the site on my phone, but don’t like squatter sites and those stupid announcements like “blahblah hasn’t created a webpage, but until they do, would you like to have a vampire monkey singing on a great email to fax to voicemail service?⁵ I wanted to point it to my home page as soon as possible, so woke up the next morning, opened my laptop, and went to Hover.com.

There were no sales, there were no tantalizing pictures of Danika Patrick unzipping her leather GoDaddy jacket. There were no vampires or monkey voice email services.

Nothing.

There was a minimalistic white page with a big button that said “Manage DNS.” I clicked that big button expecting Danika Patrick and a monkey, but was brought immediately to- as unexpected as it sounds- a DNS management pane.

Suddenly, I realized that I could breath.

Hover’s site let’s you manage your domains. Full stop. In fact, there’s not actually much else on this site that you can do. When you go to hover, you don’t have many options. You can register a domain, or you can quickly manage the domain you have. That’s it.

Wow.

I love Hover. While so many other registrars are trying to upsell you everything they possibly can, Hover just wants to do one thing, and do it well. I’ve pretty much decided to move all my domains to Hover.⁶ The time spent moving them all will be more than made up by the time saved by never having to tell Danika Patrick that I don’t want monkey voices.

If you have a single domain, check out Hover. I’m pretty sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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1. My plan was to polish the grammar, test out the jokes again, and publish it this morning. I wish I’d done it last night, but I didn’t, shame. [↩]
2. Ugh. I hate those stupid sweepstakes. Whenever I see “…chance to win an iPad” I loose interest completely. I’m not going to win, I don’t have time for your stupid sweepstakes, leave me alone and let me get the hell out of this stupid 80s vampire disco dance party! [↩]
3. Interestingly, this is all up in the air now. Why? Because if you just have anyone writing these stories– well. Look, I was thinking of something that would be educational, enlightening and tasteful, while still being just roll-on-the-floor funny as hell. Not sure that’s so easy to pull off. You need really good writers for that. [↩]
4. we actually went and consulted with Violet Blue, who was a Gnomedex speaker, because we wondered if the word “wank” translated well enough to– well, nevermind. Anyway, it was a joke, honestly, but I immediately thought that it could be a pretty funny-yet-illuminating illustration of why sex education is A Good Thing™. [↩]
5. Honestly, Hover has the nicest “this isn’t a real page” yet site I’ve ever seen. It’s simple and clean, like the rest of their site. [↩]
6. I say “pretty much” because they don’t seem to offer offsite DNS, which means my non-US domains are still on the dance floor in a basement being stepped on by vampires dressed like Flock of Seagulls [↩]