So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

".COM" is only "American" in the Americans' eyes

Large numbers of ".com" domains are associated with parts of the world OTHER than the U.S. of A.. In my own case, living in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), I see many local businesses using the ".com" TLD. In fact, I have one such domain myself, in addition to a ".ca"...

As others have pointed put, the ".us" CCTLD exists, though its use is insignificant compared to ".com", ".net", ".org" and others.

All in all, feel free to choose one option or the other. As long as I can find you, I'll keep reading you, whatever the name and top level domain I have to type to get to you...

Might just as well switch to theregister.com.us or some such

Leave it with .co.uk. .com is so not-edgy.

However, the vulture needs to be available in four hideous colours and with bigger hair.

Stick with .co.uk

".com" is too undifferentiated for a distinguished publication such as The Reg.

One more vote for .co.uk

The whole character of The Register is that it is British, with the British

irreverent approach to journalism.

.com has become a kind of characterless soup, it used to be cool 10 years

ago, now its passe.

.co.uk says 'we're a British site', what does .com say? Nothing, perhaps beyond

'we ain't got any better ideas where to be'.

I see national TLDs becoming more and more favoured for companies

which are proud of their heritage.

Your long term fan,

Victor Vorski

Keep .co.uk

I'm American and I've read The Register for years. If you changed from .co.uk to .com, I don't think I'd ever be able to adjust. There's no harm in using a country specific URL.

Keep .co.uk

Keep the .co.uk extension; it's very much a part of the branding.

I don't think I can add anything that hasn't already been said in the prior 350 comments, so I'll leave it at that.

Jumping on the .co.uk bandwagon

Leave it alone, I fear change !

Seriously though keep the URL, changing it would be the 1st step before watering down the content !

Please keep .co.uk

The Register's unique sense humour and occasional Britishisms would look _very_ out of place on a .com.

Keep it .co.uk...

I've been reading El Reg from the US since about 1999, and I value the humor, writing style, and other bits that make this place what it is.

Keep it at co.uk.

.co.uk

as a long time aussie reader - keep it

Keep the co.uk

I have been reading El Reg for like 7 years now. (I found the site while searching for BOFH stories, so you'd bet exactly what is the thing I most check for). Even after theregister.com came out, I still stick to .co.uk, I like it better.

I'm Mexican, and I *hate* sites that go .com "just because it looks more global" or worse: "it looks coooler d00d!!". I have mostly despised the .com, as it stands for .COMmercial sites, but many of them are anything but.

I hate, for example, that the local telco company's site is telmex.com, instead of telmex.com.mx , as well as one of the large banks (bancomer.com instead of bancomer.com.mx). They do have the .mx domain, but it redirects to the .com one.

I think the country TLD gives a nice branding on any site that uses it, and El Reg is a fine example. Oh, and I like much more British humor :)

Title

The register provides fairly distinctive UK content and most of its stories do have a UK feel to them. Seems reasonable to stick with co.uk

Keep it as is

"Going American"?!? The way you folks write? The U.S. technology

press doesn't deserve the honor. -- A Yank in Taiwan

.co.uk

.co.uk, natch! (as a Kiwi reader)

Keep .co.uk as primary site

If you're planning on offering 2 versions - international and uk content, then keep .co.uk for uk specific content and use .com for the global content, with a simple link between at the top of the main page between both editions like news.bbc.co.uk do. A US edition if you ever wanted one would obviously use .us

If you're just planning on one version just keep .co.uk and redirect all .com to .co.uk automatically

Why do you currently need duplication?

"Technically however this means we're already having to deal with an element of duplication in development and underlying machinery, and the duplication will tend to increase in the future with the introduction of more sites and services."

Why? Why not have one set of servers answer to both base URLs with the same base content? I do it on Apache machines at home and IIS machines at work with no problems. As long as you setup the configuration properly, no redirection or duplication is necessary.

co.uk; though us.theregister.co.uk would be silly

I've been typing co.uk for years now (yeah - I TYPE it every time) and so I've gotten quite used to it. I've been reading the Reg all those years equally for tech news as for your very special co.uk-kind-of-humor... Aside from habit and your writing style - co.uk also subtly implies a certain degree of sophistication - which is nice (which likely has more to do with the 'marketing' you mention than anything else).

I doubt you'd change your writing style or become less sophisticated should you decide to go .com. None the less - my vote is on co.uk. HOWEVER - if going co.uk means I will have to look at us.theregister.co.uk - then please don't do it. Cut your marketing losses and go .com . I'm sure I will get over it eventually...

Michael

If it ain't broke...

...don't fix it.

Where else can we get the REAL IT news every day. The Register is vital to those of us here in sillycon valley.

Did some BOFH write this article, or just have the idea. No, it must have been the boss trying to one up the rest. Never happen.

.co.uk - please!

.co.uk is an intergral part of the image of TheReg. Cheeky and bitingly sarcastic reporting that can only originate from a primarily British culture. .com isn't global- it's American and reeks of bland, CNN-ified pap.

Even some of the US contributers to TheReg, try as they may, cannot match the UK based journalists for style or humour (the most flagrant examples of shoddy fact-checking and poor grammar seem to come from your US contributers).

Keep it British!

--An Aussie in Hong Kong.

stick with .co.uk

Just because your URL isn't global doesn't mean your business isn't. Since the Reg is based in the UK, a .co.uk URL makes perfect sense -- and you still reach out across the world.

I see no need for a URL change. I've been reading the Reg for about 10 years now (from the US, and Japan -- where I live now), and haven't once looked at theregister.com site because the whole idea of multiple domains for a single site just seemed silly to me.

.com or .co.uk

Being one of those yanks, I still would likely perfer to keep typing .co.uk even though I've known for a while the .com works. keep it as it is.

Title

I think you should keep the current domain .co.uk to preserve the originality and to show where you belong.

I'm a cultural snob - .co.uk is best

I'm an Australian who believes there is too much US centric comment (not to say US spelling) on the Internet, and looks to The Register to provide a more balanced IT viewpoint.

The Register should be proud of its irreverent view of life, which is very much the traditional British way. I'd hate you to loose that for a more "International" feel, which becomes more American feel.

British is better - why devalue your brand?

No. Not even in your dreams!

I think you should preserve your British identity. It is perfectly fine with me as it is now (even though I am not a Brit)

UK is important to Reg identity (as a Kiwi reader)

For me, the fact it's UK is part of the appeal of the Reg. I find the humour and irreverent slant is VERY British, and what makes the Reg my favourite tech news site. Especially in the face of the sea of US content. Keep .co.uk !

Funny, I think I found the Reg through looking for BOFH also.

Resist blandness

The world is awash with is-it-american-or-not dot com sites, and this site is 'culturally' British in tone so stick with .co.uk. If it ain't broke...

.co.uk, of course

One of the best things about The Register is that it's not American. While I would normally encourage the .com tld as a global presence, I think the .uk highlights the charm and the integrity of the site to those of us in the rest of the world (ie Australia).

Closed Minded American

Keep the co.uk!!!!! I come to this site to get a British point of view, just like I do with many other sites and countries. Just because I'm American doesn't mean I have become to lazy to type a few additional characters. Plus, my bookmark doesn't really care.

Continue with the Brand and continue with the articles and leave Gore out of it!!!! LOL

Go to dot net

I don't think anyone in the ISP business would begrudge you "theregister.net". It is top level, not so obviously US centred as ".com" and makes as global a statement as anyone could ask for.

Tom Fuegi.

(who can't be bothered with logging in right now).

.com rules the world...

But it really doesn't matter.

please no silly US site

Please leave the domain co.uk.

As a non english nor us reader of your side, I really would prefer you would leave the domain a uk domain. I would not read the register as regulary as now, if it would be one of those arrogant US news sides with reporters who are always forgetting, that many of their readers (as most people in the world) aren't US citizens and aren not sharing their views. Ever seen a US citizen in a foreign country which has tried to speak in the country native language or even to think about that people living in the country they are currently visiting could not understand them if they are talking fast in their US slang? I never.

Currently I can cleary differentiate between your uk and us reporters just by the style they are writting. E.g your US reporters (as almost all US writters) always are thinking that everyone in the world knows that the small city named "bla" is located in state "blo" in the US, so they are just talking about "bla" without mentioning "blo" or even the US. The same happens for people like politicans and such.

And last but not least, no US side will ever have that uk esprit with that special british humor as cultivated in the Vulture Central.

So you should keep the uk-brand, even if more and more us-reporters are writing articles. This way, they will be reminded that they are writting for a non US news site (with non US readers).

Geolocation

I dont care if you keep the .com as long as you dont geolocate and force the "filtered" version upon those of us accessing theregister.co.uk from the states.

I personally like some of the UK centric news, and as an american I think that removing that removes part of the charm. While we in the states are not currently dealing with ring of steel and mandatory citizenship papers protecting us from . It is nice to have a heads up on what maybe coming our way, and its always nice to know we are not alone in having stupid politicians.

I personally believe that the .co.uk adds to you branding, so stop listening to those damn wale song cds.

simple solution

Simple solution would be to just decide on one, set it as a primary domain, then set all others as parked domains.

This gives you the benefit of being able to use either to locate the site, then in the url it would show .co.uk or .com depending on what the user went to. Of course this means you would need to stop making the links url specific (use /folder/link rather then www.sitename.com/folder/link

fewer dots, use .com

even though I've read you guys for years, and I didn't care about the .co.uk ever, objectively, it's just that much more obscure, so if you're going to use one, use the simplest one, .com

keep co.uk ... you'll be glad you did

From Canada.

You're right, the dot com is sooo American. I love the

British character of this site even though it is clearly

including the intenational view. The BBC is seen as

both international AND British, you too can be both.

Keep the character. As time goes by, the net will need

these distinguishing ideosyncracies. You wouldn't change

the spelling of Worchester would you?

.co.uk

Ive never had a problem with the .co.uk extension as an American. And I can tell you based on a lot of our media I honestly am a bit more likely to trust info coming from The Reg with that .uk at the end. And if thats the case for an American I figure its even truer for other parts of the world.

Use both (see below)

uk.theregister.com <-> theregister.co.uk

There is no reason not to use both as the webserver will quite happily serve the same pages as a whole number of domains.

Vote for .co.uk - and theregister.us - make .com global and not american!

Need to keep it.co.uk. The yanks generally don't understand our sarcastic humour. Need to give them a clue.

If you fancy starting up theregister.com.au and want to give me a job, I'm up for that. Already live there.

Title

Please leave it; it shows its parentage.

Don't confuse foreigners with .com

A .com news site communicates a reasonable expectation of bland treatments, Columbia-scale fact checking, and no filtering of boring stories. .co.uk gives fair warning of snideness, unfair bias, sensation-seeking, focus on what's important, intermittent wild unreliability and sarcasm. Stick with what you know.

Keep .uk

We had exactly the same conversation at my company recently. We are an established .co.uk brand (in fact .co.uk is part of of brand) and finally managed to secure the .com version last year. We asked our customers, most, but by no means all of whom are UK-based whether we should keep .co.uk or swap to .com. The resounding answer was keep .co.uk.

As a media organisation, I would think that having a UK identity is a distinct advantage.

Stick with .co.uk

I like the fact that you have .co.uk as part of the address. Makes it obvious that it is a British website. Not that it would really make a diff to me if you changed the address. If you dropped the brit slang/humor and language idiosyncrasies I would be disappointed however.

Another American that can type .co.uk

Personally, I'd miss the .co.uk. It's part of the site's identity.

Either

My initial reaction was that you should keep .co.uk. I've been using this URL for years and I think it's cool. But if you decide to go with .com, that's fine too I guess.

rebranding

For a web based company, changing your url is basically rebranding. Rebranding is never smart.

It ain't broke.....

El Reg has such a strong brand people just know it as .co.uk. It's a proven site and as others outside the UK have said it adds an extra bit of sizzle to it.

stay with .co.uk

Switching to .com would be embracing blandness.

.co.uk

.co.uk allows me to feel like an elitist bastard. I like that.

Frankly, I vote for theregister.mil

Not that the DoD is likely to go along with that, though.

.co.uk

Well done to whoever wades through all this lot! 385 comments at the time of writing..

Anyway. As a yankee-hating Kiwi (well not quite, the people are nice if a little ... let's just say "simple", but the government and the corporations that rule the government are a bunch of [multiple expletives deleted], and a Reg fan from the day you guys took over hosting the BOFH, I say ".co.uk" all the way.