Wednesday, August 17, 2005

The Cheapest domain on the web, just for 1 $ !

How i got it!
The story!


I have been using free sub-domain names until now, and had tried even free top level domain names, yes free, something like "yourname".tk . but there was a catch, if your site got less than 150 hits per month, the deal was off, how rude!

So i continued to use free sub-domains and free hosting for my minuscule sites, just fro the heck of have a presence on the web. I would put up pictures of me and my friends out on a vaction or some pics from our college days, just to show off to people. Very few of the people who figure in those snaps actually had visited the site. Anyways, atleast some did.Then one fine day, a friend of mine got an email from a hosting company, which was too good to be true.

It was something like this:-

750 mb web space
15 gb monthly transfer included
200 pop3 e-mail accounts
$25 account setup fee waived
Control panel
24/7/365 live chat support
24/7/365 phone support
24/7/365 email support
Ok it was a good offer, it was a linux promotion package free for 6 months, but what made it better was the fact that it came with a domain which was being sold for only 1$.

It was the best deal ever on the net from me, a domain name for a whole one year, for just 1$.
I signed up right away. Unfortunately "sandesh.com" had been aquired by some newspaper of the same name, years ago and now that i hits me, i dont know why i did not go for "sandesh.net".
What the Fcuk! I must be outta my mind, actaully too excited to think of a proper name and so i ended up with http://sandytech.net/ .

Ya, i know it is lame , or you can say childish, but that is what i named my firm years ago: Sandytech Inc. How did i come up with the name? my nickname plus the tech thing put together. That's it, pretty simple and lame. It's okay, as long as i have a domain, i am happy.
Atleast for a year.

Now i had a domain and 750 mb web space with it. I started thinking of the possibilities.
I could make a good homepage and put it up there, or i could make sometime other than in html? No, not possible, I dont know or plan to learn PHP or Perl in the distant future and the only scripting language which managed to impress upon me (or was that simple to learn) was Asp.net, and i was stuck with Linux. (no there was no Mono on it.)

So i did not have much of a choice than have some static html pages, and so i put up a page , until i came up with something better. And i did not for many days. I had to think of something....

One fine day i remembered that i had a blog at blogger.com which had been last updated 3 months back, because i forgot all about it due to some official work which had to be completed by me(this seldom happens). I revieved the blog, and then it hit me.

Why do i have to put in so much effort to design a site and put some content in it and upload it to my free linux account, when i have a good Blog at my hand which can be updated easily and had even started supporting image uploads now. Eureka!, but wait how do i connect my domain to this blog. Hmmmm. ok lets' see.

I logged in to my free account and clicked on the domain manager and was greeted with the message, (Hard luck, Freebie Guy) that i had to contact support to use the domain manager.
So i got into a chat with a guy named Jon (never heard that name before, ha ha) and asked him to help me point my domain to my blog. What? I replied after reading his reply.

I was supposed to pay 7.95$ as redirection fee for a 1$ domain, you must be kiddin me!
Jon said that it was in the TOS(Terms of Service), who reads that anyways.
We just click "I Agree" so instinctlively as if we are the ones who have come up with the TOS.
Ok, you got me there Jon, ha, no ways you guys, i was not gonna pay anyways. There was a flash of light in my mind.

I asked Jon if it was ok if i use a redirection script to redirect people from my domain to my blog.
He had no problems with that, and i was laughing my guts out on that reply, only a fool is gonna pay these guys 7.95$ as redirection fee, that too for a 1$ domain, people are not that dumb guys.

I put up a script on my linux account which redirected the user to my blog and Viola!
http://sandytech.net/ now pointed to http://smurfit.blogspot.com/
Yahoo!, o sorry Gmail! (i use gmail, hate yahoo).

Now i had a top level domain pointing to my blog, indicating to people that i was a serious Netizen, barring the fact that the domain is down some times, and so i have to give people the alternate address to my blog, i.e. http://smurfit.blogspot.com/ . Ya Ya ok, Dont laugh guys.

The guy in support, Jon again, said that this was due to the fact that the Linux Promotion Package was in Beta Stage and would take time to be stable.
It was his style of telling me that the domain for 1$ would be working literally for the amount of time it has been paid for, or may be less than that too!

Anyways guys, atleast i have some thing, (i love to look at the positive sideof things on such occasions) and i have started or plan to actively start blogging, as i am a responsible Netizen.
What if i use too many commas in my post, or if this post is so incredibly long and irritating.

Its ok, i guess, i has to be guys, with me everythings fine everytime, barring the time when i turn into a positive pessimist. Is there a "-" between " positive pessimist", anyways, its ok i guess. . . .

No comments: