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Email Naming Convention for Personal Website

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Attronarch:
I've been contemplating a personal domain for some years now, but until now it wasn't justified by the volume of work I did. Since it did significantly increase this year, I finally bought it a week or two ago.

Besides learning WordPress by doing all kinds of silly mistakes, I got stuck on ridiculous, but important thing - how should I name my e-mail?

I do a lot of e-mailing, back-and-forth, and on different professional levels. Start-ups don't really care, but corporate clients do.

Did some research, and I definitely don't like naming it like:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

I kind of liked:

[email protected] (favourite)
[email protected]
[email protected]

My domain is first letter of my name followed by my full surname and then .com.

I'd like to hear your experiences. What did you use, or encountered, that you've found professional and thought it sounds good?

wraith808:
I don't think that there is a real naming convention.  It's an art when you're not doing it specifically in the known ways.  I have one at [email protected].  I have another where, with the new TLDs, I was able to make it something really cool.  I've had that [email protected] forever... and people get it, and can remember it.  But once I changed it to my new one, not only do they remember it, I get a reaction.  And by that, they remember me.

To show what I mean, let's say you were a consultant in c-sharp.  Why not register csharp.consulting (it is available) and do [email protected]?  You can do all sorts of things with all of the new TLDs.

Take a look at your last name?  Is it a descriptor?  A verb?  An adverb?  Make use of that to make your e-mail memorable.  What if your name was Richard Strange?  You could do all sorts of things with that.  Just need Strange to be available in the tld you want.  I know someone with the last name fake... and I was so jealous of the things you could do with that.  Until I realized mine made it just as open, and got a cool one.

I guess my point is, unless your domain name is already set, try something outside the norm in order to make it memorable.  Because I can tell you, I get a good reaction every time I tell people my e-mail.  And they remember it.

If you are stuck on your domain name, however, I'd suggest a form of alliteration, i.e. first letter of first name full surname at first letter of first name full surname .com  That would also make it memorable.

Shades:
[email protected] - that is the most formal/professional, even though your domain has the name it has. Which is a good reason to not use your first/last name (or any combination thereof) in a domain name (that you plan to expose to the interwebz) in the first place.

Using your initials...while that might sound good to you, after all, you know and your direct family & friends know these. If you plan to use that account for professional communication, expect errors because your professional contact might know your name, but not your initials. Besides that, most people only have 2 or 3 initials, so those short names are easily guessable for spammers.

How many mail accounts are provided by your ISP (the hoster of your domain)? Even the cheaper ones in the Netherlands give you unlimited mail addresses. With my very reliable host (25 euro/year including taxes and domain renewal) I get a main domain name (.nl), 5 sub-domains, 75GB/month traffic, 5 MySQL databases and unlimited mail addresses on the main and sub domains. All their servers are Linux based and you are able to manage everything for your domain through a CPanel interface.

All I want to say is that it doesn't take that much effort for your ISP to provide you with lots of mail addresses at virtually no (storage/maintenance) cost to them. Especially for a personal domain where traffic will be low (it might seem impressive to you, for your hoster it will be just a drip in a bucket). 25 euro/year translates to about 3 USD/month. That shouldn't break the bank. Even in Croatia you should be able to get similar service for a similar fee.

Of course, you can register your domain and take care of hosting your website (including mail server) yourself. Something you should only consider if you have the know-how and/or need for that level of control. It is definitely not cheaper and maintaining your own mailserver is a time-sink that gives you a headache to boot. Because it is very easy to mess up, as most people don't get the concepts behind DNS and MX records (at least not the first time). However, when done right, you can have as many mail addresses as your hardware/budget allows...

mouser:
I kind of liked:
[email protected] (favourite)
[email protected]
[email protected]
--- End quote ---

those all seem fine to me and professional enough.

Deozaan:
My domain is first letter of my name followed by my full surname and then .com.
-Attronarch (July 23, 2016, 10:32 AM)
--- End quote ---

Use your first name, backwards, minus the first letter. :D So if your name were Steven Thompson, your address would be [email protected] :P

Or if your first name happens to begin and end with the same letter, such as Kirk, then just do, (e.g.,) [email protected]

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