[ghporter]

I've been "reminded" by my hosting service that I have not secured all the possible domain names for my chosen domain name. I have "MyDomainName.com," but not .org, .net, or any others.

Is it a truly "good idea" to get many of these names? Other than ".org, .net, .com," are there any of the new top level domains (like .biz) that I really do need to secure?

[olePigeon]

I get .com and .net, and that's it. If you become some multi-billion dollar company, you can always sue for the other domains.

[Chuckit]

You don't really need any but one. .com is the best to have. If you have that, there's little point getting the others if you don't feel like it — few people will accidentally go to the .org when they wanted .com. They can be nice to have, though, so other people don't associate your name with…unsavory things.

In order of importance, off the top of my head, I'd say:
.com
.net
.org
(big gap here)
.us (or other country domain)
.biz
.info

Unless I've forgotten something important, everything else is pretty much garbage. Even .info is pretty worthless — it's a huge spam TLD more than anything else.

[Big Mac]

It really depends on how much you value the name you partially own, Glenn. If it's just a personal name.com that you don't care about someone else owning, then it's not that important to buy up the alternate top level domain names. But if the name is something you plan to use for a business (or some other serious venture), then buying at least the major top level domain names (com, net, org) is highly recommended, if for no other reason than as terrifically cheap insurance against threats like cybersquatting, unscrupulous after-market domain name sellers (they'll tell you "I'll sell you your name for a bargain - $2000"), trademark violators and other fraudsters. For around $10 a year you can prevent any of that from occurring. You may not want to use the alternate domain names right now, but in the future that could change. In the mean time, you can just have the alternate names forward to your primary domain name. If you don't register the names you could save some cash but may regret passing up the opportunity in the future. Additionally, such protective registrations are recognized by US courts as an important ingredient to the defense of trade names because it's so much easier and infinitely cheaper to defensively register a name early than to fight it out in court later on.

Incidentally, which registrar nags you with those reminders? I've dealt with a few and have yet to get solicitations to purchase alternate domain names except once during the initial domain name check-out process (Godaddy).

[Railroader]

I only bought the .com.

There is only one site I go to that is a .net. And when I am away from my computers and don't have access to my bookmarks I ALWAYS type in .com on accident first. Then I have to retype it as a .net as the .com is a squatter site.

Now for any of you out there that only have .org, I highly suggest you buy .com as well. Just type in whitehouse.org and then whitehouse.com [don't-NSFW] to find out why. [edit: just tried it out. Years ago whitehouse.com was a porn site. Now it is just weird. and whitehouse.org redirects to GWB's website.]