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two beers

How One Canadian Business is Using a .PUB to Say Cheers to the Internet

Barry Coughlan
Aug 14, 2017

When Michael Bradley, Special Projects Manager of the Heart & Crown Irish Pubs, was revamping the online presence for his five Ottawa based locations in early 2017, initially the site was being updated to make it more mobile-friendly. However, upon learning of the hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that were released for public registration over the past few years, Bradley saw a great opportunity to not only update his website, but also the domain name. Luckily for him the perfect domain name extension was available for his business - .PUB.

From Humble Beginings

Michael BradleyThe Heart & Crown's website story tells a tale similar to countless forward thinking non-tech oriented businesses who saw the value of getting online in the 1990s. "Our online history is long but hasn't changed much over time. We've only had 3 websites in our 25 years in operation. The first one was a classic 90s HTML website which was put together by one of our managers' husband. It didn't look like much but at a time when very few small businesses had a website, it set us apart. Its purpose was simple, to stake our claim on the world wide web that was becoming more and more part of our daily lives. It had a few photos, a logo and very little else. We never officially contacted anybody to create a website for us until 2007 when we launched, what was at the time, a very modern and functional website that provided our customers access to menus, photos, virtual tours, bands listings and reservation information."

Recently with the adoption of smartphone technology, the Heart & Crown website was due for another update to make it more mobile-friendly. "(Our site) did the job admirably up until a few years ago when it began to look very dated and didn't perform well on smart phones. We finally got our new site up and running in January of this year. The new site is simple, current, easy to navigate and, most importantly, it looks great on a mobile device." From the basic HTML sites of the '90s to the slick smartphone ready websites of today, these types of generational website updates are natural as new technology disrupts the way we interact online. Less frequent though are the changes to website addresses. For many years businesses had few options to express or identify themselves in their domain extension. With the introduction of the new gTLDs however, businesses can now get as creative with their address as they do with their website. For the Heart & Crown, the timing was perfect.


Getting Creative to the Right of the Dot

Not unlike other early adopters of gTLDs, Bradley came to learn of the new domain extensions and specifically .PUB from an industry insider. Once he found out that heartandcrown.pub was available, he jumped at the chance to register the domain. "When I first heard that a .PUB domain was possible, I thought it was perfect for our business. We had no idea that a .PUB domain even existed until it was brought to our attention by a friend who works in the internet industry. Being an Irish pub company, it made total sense to incorporate the word into our website addresses. It's quite unique and stands out from your usual .COM or .CA addresses." For the Heart & Crown the re-branding of their domain address not only separated them from their competitors in their industry but also more closely aligned their site with what their pubs represent. "People are very observant when it comes to online content. The .PUB domain stands out from your average domain which reflects a certain level of creativity on our part. Then there's the word pub itself. It paints a vivid picture in our minds, doesn't it? Much like the words bar or tavern, it gives you an instant impression of what the establishment is like without having been there. That feeling is how .PUB separates us from our competitors. It brings the authenticity and coziness of our pubs to something we didn't think we could apply it to, a domain name." As an online reflection of their own pubs, for the Heart & Crown a .PUB made about as much sense as a pint of Guinness and fish and chips.

If you're in Canada's national region, stop in for a pint at one of Heart & Crown's five pubs. More information is available at heartandcrown.pub. Tell them Dynadot says hello!

Post by Barry Coughlan


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