Domain Names | Website Titles | Poker Webmaster Tools

What is up poker-goofs? Today's topic for me to debate and for you to listen is on website names, or blog names if that is what you got. By the way folks, if you have a blog, go spend the ten bucks and get yourself a domain name so you look legit. I think it looks so tacky when you click on a "website" and the URL has '.blogspot.com/thebestpokersite' scrolled across. This is a blogger "blog", but with a few fancy tricks I got the thing pimped out, somewhat pimped out at least. I started with just a rinky-dink blogger template and got to work! It was hard, but hey, I want my site to look decent, you know?

Anyway, back to the domain name of my website. I honestly feel that I have the perfect domain name for a poker site in virtualfelt.com. I would love to make this into a real-money online room one day, but I would obviously need some help. Anyway, since the name Virtual Felt was easy enough, I tried a bunch of different sub-titles, trying to add some mystery, or razzle-dazzle to this thing. I think I blew through around 6 or 7 of 'em. Some lasted a week, others an hour. One thing you have to understand, that despite my craziness, laziness, and haziness, everything I do has to be to perfection, as you will find out. I can't get myself to half-ass anything, and I can't "fire on all cylinders" unless everything is right to me. I think the first sub-title I came up with for the 'Felt was "Online Poker Information Site".........wow, that was original! Very creative! I then flirted with "Online Poker Portal", "Online Poker Forum", and a few other "Online Poker ______" (fill in the most commonly-used, over-abused, futuristic sounding, Internet noun). The problem was, I found myself falling right into the "cliche website name trap" that I completely blasted in an earlier post. So, first step, the order of the words had to change. I tried twisting the thing around so it wasn't starting with "Online Poker", and my ideas ranged from "Join the Online Poker Community" to "The Future of Online Poker is Now". All the titles seemed to be too "blah" or too "trendy" sounding, like I was trying to be some cool cyber-guy who actually thought people would hear the "Future is Now!" part and be excited. Granted, there are some people that would love it and think it was a cool name, but then again, come on, let's get real here.

People, the reality of it all is that people either want a site that is straight facts and serious poker articles, or they want an entertaining website with some bonus codes tossed in! Well, I can be somewhat entertaining and I got some Bonus Codes! What you see on virtualfelt.com now is FAR from where it started! I went through all the growing pains of a first time poker site designer, all the "rookie widgets" and the basic stuff. For lack of a better term, the Pokergeek101 Starter Kit, which included...

• the oversize Commodore 64 lookin', loads-only-half-the-time, Hold 'Em Odds Calculator

• a bunch of unrelated Google Adsense Ads
  

• the big YouTube video screen taking up half of the sidebar which is used as a stalling mechanism until worthwhile content can be found

• the "cool" looking black background, which gets old after about 3 days, after you realize the only people with the dark backgrounds are melodramatic, depressed, teenagers, and the 48 year old guy with the "I love Transformers" blog

• 5 links, and 4 of them are just "links" to my own website

It's funny, all the things I wanted on my site in the beginning slowly fade away as you figure out what the internet design game is all about. At first you want quantity, but then you realize that it is quality that gets you going in the right direction. Simple enough.

Back to the name. So after puttin' up the Starter Kit and posting a few entries, it was time to finally come up with a tag-line, and I finally settled on "The Quintessential Home of Online Poker"! I knew right when I thought of it that it was absolutely perfect. A perfect blend of information, links, bonuses, tips, and of course, the original stories and humor from your boy "geno", which I promise you, will never run dry and never grow stale. Entertainment is the number one reason I'm doin' this, the rest is just gravy! So make sure the beer is cold, the pizza coupons are ready, and the kids are off to bed, 'cause were gonna' talk about life, talk a lot of trash, and who knows, maybe even improve our poker skills along the way! Thanks for reading, and welcome to Virtual Felt - The Quintessential Home of Online Poker. Peace.

poker, domain names, website design, geek, webmaster tools