discuss WhyNoCapitals vs whynocapitals

[Reddstagg]

Good evening.

I often see domain names for sale that are capitalized in certain places such as 'WhyNoCapitals' when actually the domain name will always be shown as 'whynocapitals'.

I presume that there are historical reasons why domain names were lower case but my questions would be:

1- Would it ever have been possible at the get go to have capitalized letters?

2 - Will it ever be possible to have capitalized letters in the future, and if not why not?

I'm as stupid as I look, so keep any explanations simple and use small words.

Regards,

Reddstagg

 

[twiki]

Biggest marketplaces don't allow capitalized, they list at lowercase.

Your answer is there. If it did make money, they'd be doing it.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

The reason that people write their domains in pascal case is that it makes it more clear to read. This makes perfect sense for names that are multiple words because capitals makes the words clear to read.

Domain names are case insensitive, but most browsers display them in lower case no matter how you type them in. Google have developed intelligent ways to detect and display domains so that they are not confusing for users like Iime.com vs lime.com. You'd be able to tell them apart if they were normalised into a single case so I suspect this is just one of the many reasons to display them in this way.

 

[Name Trader]

My registrar, only uses lowercase. I don't know if that applies to all registrars. My sales site uses mixed case. When I'm updating my domains with my registrar's API, I have to be careful not to overwrite the domain name. I think the domain name is clearer to read in mixed case, for sales purposes, than all lowercase. There is a very small percentage (less than 1%) where I might get the mixed case wrong,or ambiguous. Which I can live with.

 

[bmugford]

I generally prefer it like that because it is easier to read and looks better on marketing.

RealEstate.com vs realestate.com for example. It also helps when you have back to back letters ending and starting words like FortWorthHomes.com vs fortworthhomes.com.

As far as domains go, you know how disastrous and confusing it would be if these were not interchangeable and different people could own case sensitive variations of the same domain? That will never happen.

Brad

 

[MadAboutDomains]

As far as domains go, you know how disastrous and confusing it would be if these were not interchangeable and different people could own case sensitive variations of the same domain? That will never happen.

Indeed that would be ridiculous to allow the registration of domains of different cases.

However I suspect that it would make sense to be able to control the display of the domain using meta tags on the page, but this would certainly be open to abuse to make your domain display differently.

 

[Jimmysun]

I prefer all small cases making buyers feel curious and puzzle the patterns by themselves, a little bit juicy comes out from their efforts.
conquerthemars.com

 

[Reddstagg]

I generally prefer it like that because it is easier to read and looks better on marketing.

RealEstate.com vs realestate.com for example. It also helps when you have back to back letters ending and starting words like FortWorthHomes.com vs fortworthhomes.com.

As far as domains go, you know how disastrous and confusing it would be if these were not interchangeable and different people could own case sensitive variations of the same domain? That will never happen.

Brad

Good morning Brad,

I guess a simple solution would be to only allow the owners of already registered names to be capitalized rather than a free for all with new registrations.

I am presuming that Ai control some of the automated listings as I sometimes see domain names which just don't make sense. I guess we still need humans after all.

I guess I am just interested in the historical technical reasons why capital letters were not used. Was there a specific technical reason why they were not used.

Regards,

Reddstagg

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I guess a simple solution would be to only allow the owners of already registered names to be capitalized rather than a free for all with new registrations.

There is no prospect of this happening because case sensitivity isn't supported by DNS according to the specification: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4343.

I realise that I'm kinda labouring the point, but it would be a serious downgrade if BoB.com didn't resolve to the same place as bob.com. If I emailed someone and it bounced because I got the case wrong - how annoying would that be?

 

[blogspotter]

Because technically it is not possible, meaning the "internet" has been designed that way. Unless you want Capital letter to be Unique from small letters. There is no historical significance. You want google.com to be same as GooGle.com otherwise they would be different.

While listing, it is the same as making it a different colored text.
If you want to sell Therapist.com as TheRapist.com in a avnforums, you need to capitalize the R
That is the only reason.

At the end of the day you are selling a string of "letters' without without numbers and hyphens.
Whether it is capitalized or not, they are still the same.

And how you present the letters is upto you. You are simply "listing" it on a webpage, not the browser address bar, and the webpage can display the letters as you want them to unless the marketplace don't allow.. But you could have different styles and font size for each letter if you want, it is just a simple tweak on the webpage code.

like DoMaIn.coM

 

[AEProgram]

paste into your browser http://www.paypaI.com youll see why forcing lowercase is good

 

[Name Trader]

paste into your browser http://www.paypaI.com youll see why forcing lowercase is good

That was what I was referring to when referring to my 1% of oddball domains. It's still a small %age because I don't really have any domains like that intentionally, because they don't make any sense. I try to always use an "i" when it's capital could be construed as an "I"

 

[bmugford]

paste into your browser http://www.paypaI.com youll see why forcing lowercase is good

Yes, I remember this actually happening in the past -

https://www.zdnet.com/article/paypal-alert-beware-the-paypai-scam-5000109103/

 

[April004]

Capitalization helps to understand and distinct between 2 or more words/keywords used in the domain name.

Example: If a domain called "expertsexchange .COM" is listed for sale, and you as a buyer do not buy ADULT / porn related domains, you'll skip this domain as you'll read 'expert sex change'. But if its been listed as "ExpertsExchange" then you'll certainly check that out!

So merely 1st letter capitalization for 2 or more words helps to understand the keywords, domain niche, and its easier for eyes to read, and brain to bookmark it!

And like others have pointed out certain alphabets like capital L and capital I in certain fonts just get printed as I. So you can't distinguish if its L or I, so it's better to write both in CAPITAL and lowercase.

Nothing more than that.

 

[Kuffy]

That possible ambiguity is probably the main reason for splitting a phrase with capitals. Pen Island is probably the famous one, and the business was owned by a fountain pen retailer, if I remember correctly. I used to own GirlsCat, but that turned out to be unusable for obvious reasons.

 

[bmugford]

That possible ambiguity is probably the main reason for splitting a phrase with capitals. Pen Island is probably the famous one, and the business was owned by a fountain pen retailer, if I remember correctly. I used to own GirlsCat, but that turned out to be unusable for obvious reasons.

https://www.name.com/blog/how-tos/tips/2013/06/the-10-best-accidentally-inappropriate-domain-names/

 

[Reddstagg]

If in doubt and you can't wait...Hyphenate!!!

A mere '-' alleviates many of the naming problems associated with only having 'live' domain names in the lower case...

tennesseeestatessurveyssimplified or

TennesseeEstatesSurveysSimplified or

tennessee-estates-surveys-simplified or

Tennessee-Estates-Surveys-Simplified