I have been using Godaddy for my domain name registration now exclusively (except for one .ie domain name) for a few years, ever since I lost the first domain name I ever had due to a registrar cock-up. When I made the switch it was pretty bewildering, I didn’t know what I was doing with their control panel, I couldn’t find things, in fact I really didn’t like the console, however things have changed over there and the domain management tools are really quite nice, any time one of my domains is updated for new DNS servers or contact information, the change happens quickly and I receive a notification about it. Since switching I have never lost a domain or even come close to it, I can configure automatic renewal for ones I want, manual for others etc… so it really quite suits me, the most impressive thing I found with Godaddy though is the support they provide to their customers.

One night when I was bored online, I was looking at the Godaddy website and spotted Bob Parsons blog, the CEO of Godaddy. Now, while he does often give some good, solid advise, his video’s are never boring. This particular night I was feeling a little bit cheeky so I decided to leave him a comment thanking him for his good tips and the great service I received, and through in a sneaky ‘by the way, any chance of a free shirt?’ on the end. The following day, I received an email from Bob’s PA asking for my shipping address and shirt size. A couple of weeks passed and I had forgotten about the whole thing when a package arrived for me through Fed Ex. A package of two Godaddy t-shirts. Not alone was Godaddy / Bob / Bob’s PA kind enough to send little ‘ol me (the shirts were XXL, so maybe not that little?) two Godaddy t-shirts, but they also covered the $27.50 Fed Ex shipping and handling charges.

How’s that for customer service?

In short, Godaddy runs a tight ship, and runs it very well. The folks over there have successfully secured my past, present, and future business.

• Designing a custom theme for wordpress that is HTML 4.01 Strict compliant.
• Writing a full, comprehensive legal disclaimer
• Writing an accessibility statement
• Writing a number of fun projects you can build at home with minimal tools
• Integrating wordpress with Google Adsense
• Integrating wordpress with Twitter
• Making a few short video’s to advertise the site and its projects

Of course, not all of these milestones are going to be in the order they are listed in here, in fact the disclaimer has been drafted and is awaiting review. Even the accessability statement is a work in progress, of course the statement cant be finalised until the theme is comlete because who knows what type of whacky accessability stuff I’m going to integrate into it. The theme is most likely going to be based off the 160gs CSS system as I think that would be a useful learning exercise. The projects can all be done in the background as Im working on the rest of the bits and pieces, all in all at present, I’d say I have around 10% of the total work drafted… which really means around 0% of it done since its all going to have to be re-visited… but hey, you have to start somewhere dont you?

Anyway, thats enough jibber jabber for now…