I meant to make the post a month ago. But as usual, life events took precedence and I simply had to hang on for the ride, snapping pics along the way.
The boys, especially our oldest, have had a summer filled with a number of vacation bible schools (VBS) throughout the greater Austin metroplex.
One of the memorable VBS events was the Great Hills Baptist VBS.
Although we don’t attend church at Great Hills Baptist, our boys attend their O’Chester Learning Center – a program committed to daily convey and teach God’s love in all activities and to lay a biblical foundation for Christian login with the heart of every child that attends.
My wife and I have watched our boys blossom into well-rounded toddlers because of this program over the last couple of years we’ve attended.
This was the first year our oldest soon was able to actively participate as a Great Hills Baptist VBS attendee. He thoroughly enjoyed this year’s VBS theme: Galatic Starveyors.
Each day he arose so excited to attend and learn. Not only did he learn and retain quite a bit of info, but he was also exhausted each day, a plus for Mom and much needed nap time.
One of the highlights of the Great Hills Baptist VBS this year was attending family night. Family night was filled with various Gospel-centered skits, songs, and activities.
To top off this year’s VBS Family Night, Great Hills turned their parking lot into a mini-carnival filled with music, bounce houses, shaved ice, cotton candy, popcorn, and a good ole train ride.
Of course, I’m always keep an eye out for domain names any time I attend events, especially Vacation Bible School events.
As you can see below, Kona Ice was keeping everyone cool and refreshed with their shaved ice speciality. I’m always intrigued by companies that use hyphens in their domain name (see Kona-Ice.com below in image).
I’m always curious to know the status of the non-hyphenated domain when I discover a company using a hyphenated .com domain.
In this case, KonaIce.com is simply a parked GoDaddy web page and registered by WebTec in the name of Chris Fischesser.
Nevertheless, Kona Ice wasn’t the only vendor present and using a hyphenated .com domain as their primary web presence.
The next hyphenated domain spotting was a huge bounce slip with a phone number and the following domain at the very top of it: Sock-Hop.com.
Reviewing their website, it was interesting learning that Sock Hop Inflatables was the companies name, yet the company doesn’t own Sock-HopInflatables.com or SockHopInflatables.com.
To ensure brand protection, I would certainly secure both domains as defensive registers if it were my company.
Also, like Kona Ice not owning the non-hyphenated domain, I discovered SockHop.com was privately registered to Name Administration (Frank Schilling) and parked with ads on the page.
As we made our way from the Sock-Hop.com inflatable, local radio station, Spirit 105.9, provided Christian Music, giveaways, raffles, and entertaining games.
They had the most visible domain display via their van and tent being wrapped with Spirit1059.com on all sides.
And those were the only domains I encountered pertaining to vendors offering their services during Family Night.
Oh yeah, actually there was one more domain spotting. As we were leaving, I spotted one more interesting domain representing an Austin-based transportation company: ResponsibleRide.net.
I’m not certain if the person driving the vehicle had kids that attend VBS or they were providing a service to enable someone to attend.
Nevertheless, I was intrigued to see their use of a .net advice as opposed to a hyphenated .com domain, which Responsible-Ride.com is available.
And yes, I checked ResponsibleRide.com to find it was registered and displaying a Name.com parked web page.
Although their domain is listed on each side of the van, I would have recommended using the domain name as opposed to the company name in larger text since company and domain are a match.
Outside of this one recommendation, I found their ad to be relatively intuitive at a glance and even more so after visiting their website.
All in all, we had a blast watching and participating with our boys at this year’s Great Hills Baptist VBS.
We’re looking forward to it and our home church’s i❤VBS.ws (yes, that’s an emoji domain!) again next summer too. See you around…
As a domain investor and business consultant, Alvin actively participates in daily domain auctions. Outside of auctions, he passionately shares his views, opinions, and vision for how businesses should and should not use domain names to generate greater customer growth and revenue.
