Pretty much this. I’ll go up to about 16 chars, personally. 20 is too much.
There should be one and only one obvious way to spell it, and preferably one obvious way to pronounce it. (If reasonable people could disagree about pronunciation, the different options should at least be easily recognizable as variants on one another.) There shouldn’t be any alternative pronunciations that resemble anything negative, or any component of the name that can be confused with something prurient or scatalogical (unless the site is porn-related, of course).
The .com should be available, and preferably the .net and .org tho I usually won’t buy those unless I already have funding or significant income from the project.
For names, I like to mine non-English vocabulary for terms that are metaphorically or mythologically connected to the problem or solution the project is about. I have a soft spot for Greek vocab/etymology, and it’s usually the first place I turn; but I’ve also used German, Hindi, Hebrew, and others.
If I’ve got a fantastic name but the domain is taken, I’ll still use the name but with a `-app`or whatever suffix only if the site at the desired domain without that suffix is very clearly not software related (for instance a pest control service or an industrial parts manufacturer or a self-published fantasy novel).
Comments
Pretty much this. I’ll go up to about 16 chars, personally. 20 is too much.
There should be one and only one obvious way to spell it, and preferably one obvious way to pronounce it. (If reasonable people could disagree about pronunciation, the different options should at least be easily recognizable as variants on one another.) There shouldn’t be any alternative pronunciations that resemble anything negative, or any component of the name that can be confused with something prurient or scatalogical (unless the site is porn-related, of course).
The .com should be available, and preferably the .net and .org tho I usually won’t buy those unless I already have funding or significant income from the project.
For names, I like to mine non-English vocabulary for terms that are metaphorically or mythologically connected to the problem or solution the project is about. I have a soft spot for Greek vocab/etymology, and it’s usually the first place I turn; but I’ve also used German, Hindi, Hebrew, and others.
If I’ve got a fantastic name but the domain is taken, I’ll still use the name but with a `-app`or whatever suffix only if the site at the desired domain without that suffix is very clearly not software related (for instance a pest control service or an industrial parts manufacturer or a self-published fantasy novel).