Should I Move Whitespace?
Honestly, I think you need to spin off Whitespace to its own domain. Besides the home navigation issue, it’s also confusing to see a directory of the network also being listed as a member of said network.
As I told Mark in the comments of that entry, I have thought about this more times than not, but never come to a solid conclusion so I thought I would open it up to the audience to help me finally come to a decision. The problem with Whitespace being on the 9rules domain is that the site is a separate entity from 9rules. It’s not the company’s blog because we already have one of those so in that sense I can understand the confusion that it can cause people.
The problems though are that the site is well linked to (301 .htaccess redirects, I know) and is generally well-known throughout the community and beyond. I can’t attain whitespace.com so I would have to think of another name.
However, this also allows for new opportunities. New branding. New design. Anyways, what do you think would be best for this site? I know Keith experienced this a while ago and tried to change domains and quickly changed back so hopefully he has some input into the matter.
Too bad you can’t register “www. .com”
That would be cool.
By Christian Montoya on January 26, 2006 2:55 pm
Well, personally I wondered why it was here as well. I don’t think the name is as important as the content, go for a new name/image. Heck, I’m sure Mike has nothing better to do these days, right?
By dreams on January 26, 2006 3:01 pm
Christian: Yeah that would be kind of cool.
dreams: As for Mike, well I don’t even know where he is right NOW so I have to solve that problem first.
By Scrivs on January 26, 2006 3:02 pm
I guess the key is to add a pre-/suffix to the word “whitespace”. (I do think you need to keep that name.)
You could always call it 9whitespaces.com ;-).
By Jonathan Holst on January 26, 2006 3:20 pm
You could do subdomains on the 9Rules one, ideally a subdomain for each member of the network. I don’t know, just an idea since you can’t get the .com.
I don’t see what the big deal with using mod_rewrite is, the transition could be flawless. It might have an initial effect on search engine rankings, but I’m sure that wouldn’t last long.
By Justin Perkins on January 26, 2006 3:21 pm
There isn’t any big deal with using mod_rewrite. Hell our .htaccess files are larger than our CSS files so it’s not like we are afraid to use it.
By Scrivs on January 26, 2006 3:24 pm
Use whi.tespace.com. All the cool kids are doing it.
By Anonymous Mouse on January 26, 2006 3:30 pm
Maybe you could buy scrivs.com?
By Robert on January 26, 2006 3:30 pm
@Christian: That’s deep man. Deep.
Scrivs: You might want to consider a new name anyway. I find the current name somewhat racist. Why do people call it whitespace anyway? Because the background is white? I remember back when the default background was gray. It derived from the print world and paper is white? Who ever said paper had to be white? I bet it was a white man. Isn’t the absence of something usually black? Wait, that’s racist too… Than again, no, in absorptive light (think paint), the absence of color is white, where in reflective light (think light bulbs), the absence is black. Forget it. Make it yellowspace. Or redspace.
(disclaimer: i’m white. very very white.)
By Lance E. Leonard on January 26, 2006 3:54 pm
When the network kicked off, my initial thoughts were that you should move it. I love the name, so after further consideration, I would fall in the leave it where it is camp. I rememberly fondly when Rundle introduced you (as Scrivs) to me at SXSW and my first thought was “Whitespace!” That is some serious branding.
By Britt on January 26, 2006 4:05 pm
I don’t think you should change the name but I do think that you should move to it’s won domain, or actually the whitespace.9rules.com works. Maybe you could even setup referral URLs for all 9rules members and yours could just be the one that is actually hosted at the address.
By Jesse J. Anderson on January 26, 2006 4:13 pm
Racist? that’s just ruddy stupid. You’ve never heard of the concept of whitespace before?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_%28graphic_design%29
And jesus, scrivs is hardly racist… the dude didn’t get that ‘fro with gel.
http://9rules.com/whitespace/a_new_pic.php
http://www.molly.com/2005/11/05/show-your-fro/
By JC on January 26, 2006 4:37 pm
Oh, and just grab scrivs.com or paulscrivens.com or something and do scrivs.com/whitespace if you’re worried about pulling it off of 9rules. I think mark’s concern is fairly silly, a solution in search of a problem, but if you feel it has credence, get a domain that has your personal brand to host your blog on.
By JC on January 26, 2006 4:48 pm
I read Whitespace before the serious network launch, and it’s always been at this location (as far as I know), so I never thought anything of it.
That being said, often I come here by typing “Whitespace” in Firefox’s location bar. For those not in the know, Firefox transparently takes me to Google’s #1 result.
I would say:
1) Do not kill your brand if you have to move it. But I guess it will be a personal decision.
2) If you do move, make sure to do the correct permanent redirects so you keep your PageRank. I’m sure you’re already all over it.
May I also ask, “What exactly is wrong with the CEO of 9 Rules having a subdirectory on the 9 Rules domain?”
I see where people are coming from to some degree, but it does say very prominently at the top:
“About Whitespace
Whitespace is written by Paul Scrivens, the CEO of 9rules, Inc.”
More than acceptable. It’s not like you work for some major corporation, say CNN, and you plop down your personal blog at CNN.com/myblog (and subsequently are fired). I see it very different from that.
By Bradley on January 26, 2006 5:43 pm
Don’t I live in the land of free speech? I understand the the Internets are a global medium, but for crying out loud, can’t a guy express concern over one of the hottest topics still plaguing our nation - racism? It’s completely obvious that in EVERY SINGLE ONE of scrivs’ posts there is a definite undertone of racism just wanting to come out. This was just my opportunity to express it.
And no, after being a designer for nearly a decade, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard the term racism.
Oh, and I have a wiki link for you too:
right here
By Lance E. Leonard on January 26, 2006 5:51 pm
That should say
“And no, after being a designer for nearly a decade, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard the term whitespace“.
By Lance E. Leonard on January 26, 2006 5:52 pm
Well. http://ScrivSpace.com is available. hurry.
By HART (1-800-HART) on January 26, 2006 6:32 pm
JC - my man!
Geez, I thought you were dead. It’s been years since you’ve shown your name around here on a regular basis.
Silly? Solution in search of a problem? C’mon man, I would hope you’d know me better than that.
Like most of the comments I leave here, I try to expand the topic into a bigger, broader sense. The topic was IA, more specifically, IA done right. In the general sense of IA done right, having a home link on a subdirectory that doesn’t actually go home is confusing to most people.
Again, this is approaching the matter in a bigger more general sense. I’m hip to the Whitespace = Scrivs = 9Rules…blah blah.
I’m aware of all the issues with moving or not moving - Paul’s faced all this before when he was looking at moving CSSVault off the 9rules domain — that didn’t really suffer too much.
Paul, the think you’ve got going here is the large number of readers here, and the network outside the network. If you do end up spinning off Whitespace (I still hold that you should — which I’ll explain in a second), there will be enough awareness of it that no one who reads or would potentially read will be getting lost and the noise across the blogosphere will more than likely be loud enough that Google won’t lose track of you either.
My case for moving —
You talk / have talked frequently about IA best practices
You have a web design consultancy that certainly deals with IA best practices and reputation
You have a “designer of the year” on your team
You have a usability guru on your team
…
Go west young man - if you get my drift
JC, again good to read from you again — don’t be a stranger.
By Mark on January 26, 2006 7:39 pm
Scrivs: You might want to consider a new name anyway. I find the current name somewhat racist.
Hillarious, I think you should leave it where it is, if it aint broke …
By Tom on January 26, 2006 7:51 pm
I forget ALL THE TIME that you’re not at whitespace.com, even though I’ve been lurking / commenting here for a year or more now. Maybe I’m just dense, I don’t know. I even went so far as to rationalize why you kept it on 9rules — I thought maybe it was to promote the affiliation. That only made half-sense though, because by now everybody who knows 9rules knows whitespace, and vice versa.
Everyone has good ideas, I like whitespace.9rules.com, I like whi.tespace.com, I like 9whitespaces.com, all great ideas. whitespacerules.com? I don’t know, we could go on all day.
I switched domains around this time last year from dizzylimits.com to dizzyisland.com — it was a fairly seamless transition, and I’m glad I did it. It took a bit for the search engines to catch up, but it all worked itself out. dizzylimits still shows up here and there though, it doesn’t seem to want to die. I don’t have near the traffic you do though of course, so I can’t say what it will do to your readership and crosslinking.
I think as long as you advertise your move well in advance, maybe hire someone to send notes to everyone who links you and notify them — or even hire someone to write an app that e-mails them for you! Ha! Maybe take a look at your ratio of returning visitors, base your decision on that.
I doubt you’d have much of a problem. I wouldn’t rebrand though for the sake of a domain name, that could be a disaster. Wasn’t it you who wrote that article about how domain names don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, anyway?
By Lindsay on January 26, 2006 8:19 pm
Seems to be pretty split so far which of course makes my job so much easier.
By Scrivs on January 26, 2006 9:06 pm
I think you should move it.
There. I broke the tie.
(All in a day’s work…all in a day’s work.)
By Ryan on January 26, 2006 9:37 pm
While having its own domain would be nice, I see nothing wrong with the URL the way it is. People generally have no problem finding it (I shouldn’t think) nor are they likely to be confused particularly. As for it hangling off 9rules I don’t see the problem.
I’ll go back to sleep now :-)
By WD Milner on January 26, 2006 10:00 pm
whitespace = good.
Keep it.
moving = no problem.
Mark is right… between the readerbase and the vibrations cross the blog-o-ball we would all follow you.
provided it isn’t a domain with random unnecessary punctuation. (= bad)
new domain = good
you could do another suggestions showdown post and let everyone in on the fun like with the tagline thingy
it was different before when 9rules was your site and had whitespace was sort of a mini spinoff.. now 9rules is huge and a completely independant entity and whitespace is more than capable of standing on it’s own so why not push it out of the shadow a bit?
So yea… go west.. or possibly north. lots of space up there too
subdomain = good
here or on the potential new spot
Lindsay: you’re not the only one. I only stopped doing that when I got it bookmarked on all of my normal computers. Otherwise I just google it or go through 9rules
By sunshine on January 26, 2006 10:09 pm
If anything start having complete RSS feeds. Anymore, I don’t even bother following the link to this site to read the full article. Four lines just isn’t gonna get me. Four skimmed paragraphs might.
By Nolan Eakins on January 26, 2006 10:56 pm
Gah! 9space.com is taken, whitespaced.com is taken, spacergif.com is taken… the internet is overpopulated.
I think paulscrivens.com is a good domain… though you should do something with it already. At least if you aren’t going to put whitespace there, you could put a picture of yourself, and a little gif of a construction guy digging. rofl.
By Christian Montoya on January 27, 2006 12:04 am
What about whitespace.9rules.com??
nah… not better
well for me it does not matter where it is,
furthermore, it is not just “whitespace” for me, it is “9rules whitespace”, so.. yeah…
By Julian on January 27, 2006 4:19 am
Move it. That’s it, all said.
By Miles on January 27, 2006 7:40 am
I think moving it would be (as has been said) a chance to change things and also to improve design and face lift wise. I would avoid the . . domain names as the punctuation variants gets rather tedious. Ultimately what ever you do and if you do move people will follow you as you have a loyal following and word gets around faster than a mouse with in cheese heaven around the blog. Oh well, friday affecting my analogie and spelling ometer again…..
By karmatosed on January 27, 2006 9:03 am
I like http://whitespace.9rules.com for a number of reasons, the biggest being it actual starts with Whitespace, and like so many others, I often attempt to get to the site by typing “white” in my address bar, only to remember to switch it to 9rules. I eventually said forget it, and just create a tab group, with all the 9rule members that I read regularly, including whitespace, so I just use that instead.
I can see the hesitation with a name change though. I associate Scrivs with whitespace first, and then 9rules (don’t know why, that was pobably just the order of introduction, but it remains). I think the subdomain would work well.
By allgood2 on January 27, 2006 9:27 am
I actually like whi.tespace.com despite its total cliché-ness.
By Veracon on January 27, 2006 9:45 am
Here are some particularly horrible suggestions:
scrivs.info
whitespaceblog-9rules.cc
the-whitespace.ws
9rules-cheap-domain-hosting.net
scrivsspace.net
mywhitespaceonline.com
iWhitespace.com
paulscrivens.com
By Fred Simmons on January 27, 2006 12:25 pm
It doesn’t matter to me if you move it or not, but just don’t change the name. It just wouldn’t be the same with a different name. :)
By Jennifer Grucza on January 27, 2006 12:52 pm
I got it:
fffspace.com
It’s available, and it’s really geeky.
By Justin Michael on January 27, 2006 1:52 pm
Justin: you win.
By Christian Montoya on January 27, 2006 2:37 pm
@Justin: It would have been even cooler if he had a domain, and then it could be /#fffspace. :-)
By Jonathan Holst on January 28, 2006 9:16 am
If it was me I’d move Whitespace just so that you have your own place to hang out away from 9rules in case Rundle and Devroe decide they don’t need you any more ;)
By Anthony on January 28, 2006 10:01 am
If whitespace is going to be just a blog then i cant see any problem with leaving it here. However if you want to have more than just a blog here I think really you will need your own domain.
It also depends on how tightly you want your blog being associated with the 9rules name. But hey you are the CEO.
BTW: Scrivs really you need to sort out your use of no follows. In your comments it seems to take the comment number and put that many no follows with your link.
By Eddie Sowden on January 29, 2006 6:35 am
@Justin: hehe… why not make it 255255255space.com??? :D
By Julian on January 29, 2006 6:37 am
Why don’t you contact the owners of whitespace.com in case they want to sell it? Doesn’t look like they’re doing a lot with their site anyway!
By Bon on January 29, 2006 10:49 am
I vote fffspace.com!
How about getting a different TLD like .net or .us I haven’t checked for availability but its just a suggestion.
By Lawsy on January 30, 2006 1:13 pm