23 Feb, 2009, boblinski wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I have a friend that is hosting my mud and I think he'll be okay with hosting my website.. I just want a really simple website that is basically just one page with a title and some info about my mud.. do I have to buy a domain name? If so, can I purchase on on a life-time basis? any suggestions?
23 Feb, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
You don't "have" to buy a domain name unless you want one. Your host might be able to set up a URL for you like: www.yourhost.com/YourMudName or something like that. And no, you cannot to my knowledge purchase domains "for life" – you need to buy them on an annual basis from a registrar. Some registrars offer discounts if you buy several years at once.
23 Feb, 2009, boblinski wrote in the 3rd comment:
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alright, also, how do I have my website accessible via Google searches? (and other such searches)
23 Feb, 2009, Guest wrote in the 4th comment:
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You can however buy for what qualifies as a life term on the internet. 10 years. Yes, some registrars will do that. It's a bloody eternity in internet terms :)
23 Feb, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
boblinski said:
alright, also, how do I have my website accessible via Google searches? (and other such searches)

If people link to you, you'll show up in Google and other crawlers eventually. Most searches also let you submit links that the crawler will (eventually, maybe, possibly) get around to indexing at some point, but typically without inbound links you'll be low on the totem pole of search results.
23 Feb, 2009, boblinski wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
boblinski said:
alright, also, how do I have my website accessible via Google searches? (and other such searches)

If people link to you, you'll show up in Google and other crawlers eventually. Most searches also let you submit links that the crawler will (eventually, maybe, possibly) get around to indexing at some point, but typically without inbound links you'll be low on the totem pole of search results.


Is this the same for the free blog sites you can sign up for?
23 Feb, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Yes (mostly). Crawlers, pretty much by definition, can only find things that are accessible. Things are accessible if:
(1) they are linked to from an accessible site
or
(2) the crawler knows about it otherwise (e.g. via link submission)

I say "mostly" not because the rules change for blog sites, but because such sites occasionally have an index of blogs, which essentially provides a free link to the crawler. I would always recommend however that you submit the link manually once you're ready, as that gives a hint to the crawler that you'd like to be indexed.
24 Feb, 2009, Guest wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Also worth noting that if you're going to purchase your own domain name, Google has a tendency to know about this before you're ready. So if you don't want it crawled, build the content before you get the domain name and activate that later. Avoid hardcoding URL's into your website if you can avoid it so that it'll be easier to deal with changing it.
24 Feb, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 9th comment:
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Google "mud tits". It used to work on I feel lucky, but it's dropped to number 4. ;-)
24 Feb, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 10th comment:
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boblinski said:
Is this the same for the free blog sites you can sign up for?


Yes. Google does not discriminate for (or against) any site, except for a handful of known malware and spam farms that truly have no useful value to the world whatsoever.

Most (good) blog sites now generate the HTML such that links in _comments_ do not contribute to search indexing or to page rank, however, in order to greatly reduce the desire of malware authors to write bots that post comment spam for PageRank manipulation. So if you want to advertise your MUD, blog comments aren't the place to do it.
24 Feb, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 11th comment:
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Are there tags you use on HTML links to tell crawlers that they don't count as normal links?
24 Feb, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 12th comment:
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24 Feb, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
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Oh yes. I had seen that before, guess I forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.
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