I wanted to get everyone's advice on what they feel is the best domain name for a online community (much like this site).

If for example, the topic of the forums are XXXX ... which would be ideal:


XXXXforums.com
XXXXboards.com
XXXXtalk.com


or anything else that's similar. Please share your ideas. Thank you!

Any will be ok. XXXXforums.com probably has a slight edge. You should reg the singular and plural.

i vote forum/forums too

Yeah, forums. :)

out of the three options above i'd say forums too

sometimes it depends on the XXXX part
forum, forums, board, boards, talk, chat etc..

If I register forums, I wont be able to do the singular since its already taken and the owner is not willing to sell. Plural "forums" is available.

In this case, do you think it would be better to go with "talk" and avoid the confusion?

With "talk" there is the advantage that it is shorter and easier to spell & say. However, with "forums" it is more direct and might also have a better chance with search engines.

I wouldn't really recommend using the plural when somebody else is using the singular. Lead to traffic loss and confusion. Can't you select a related keyword for the XXXX? Of course, if it's like a city name, then probably not. I think you could work with XXXXtalk.com, depends a bit what the XXXX is.

whats your opinion on a .org domain name? I was able to acquire a really nice and short domain, however it is .org.

You could also use bb as in talkbb.com.

I actually wouldn't recommend using forum, board, bb or any of these though, since if you decide you want the site to be more than a forum, you're still stuck with the name.

I like xxxtalk.com because carforum.com is going to always be a forum but cartalk.com can be a forum or other things.

Org will work for a forum. Preferrably if it's a non-profit forum. If it's a for-profit forum, you should acquire the .com, ALWAYS. You will always experience some traffic bleed to the .com if you are using the .org without owning the .com

Most names you want are probably taken already, better check their availability first.

I prefer the forums.com extension of those. I wonder if the word xxxx is meant to be the word 'host'

I would select a domain based on the topic I am about to start and add a subdomain as follows:
forums.MYTOPIC.com :)
pretty nice

Yep. That would work good, too. I'm not sure how seach engines treat sub-domains though. I do remember some discussion that for seo purposes that sub-domains were considered spammy by search engines and the preferred option was to use sub-directories. www.mytopic.com/forums/. This may not be important to you, of course.

I do remember some discussion that for seo purposes that sub-domains were considered spammy by search engines and the preferred option was to use sub-directories.I came across this discussions as well but gave the same a try on one of my high traffic site, it works well.. google/yahoo/msn everything is well indexed..

I don't know if anyone wants to hear about this. Personally I think it is rubbish. I own a few domain names with the forum in it. And I have a couple of forums based on the URLs. There is such a thing in the SEO world called "Poison Words". And forum is supposed to be a poison word. I'll let you all look it up and come to your own conclusions. I have not noticed any issues with my rankings based on the word forum. But I just thought I'd throw it out for discussion.

1. I vote for XXXforums because it's not only targetted for search engines but for simple visitors when they see the url

2. The issue with sub domains = spam i think has no logic.
Every subdomain is practially a new domain. There are many countries with 3rd level domain names. If this is true then all their names should be banned. Subdirectories are much easier for spammers to create, if this is preferred, then i guess se asks for spam
Someone who spams the engines will be clearly marked as se spammer. Subs or Subdirs have nothing to do with this