Team XYZ is heading back to SXSW again this week, and that means our SXSW Scavenger Hunt is back too! But in this year’s Scavenger Hunt, you don’t have to attend SXSW to be entered to win, you can join the fun from wherever you are.
There will be a total of 5 prizes awarded and winners will be selected through a raffle drawing. First Prize will snag the Nintendo Switch, Second Prize will take off with the Camera Drone, and Third, Fourth, and Fifth prize winners grab the PublicSpace.xyz swag bags.
The more entries you get, the better your chances are to win, so make sure you remember all the ways you can gain entries below:
No Purchase Necessary. Purchase does not enhance the chance of winning. Void Where Prohibited. To see complete official rules, head to www.gen.xyz/sxsw.
The contest is open now, so you can start racking up those entries right away. Don’t miss your chance to join in on the SXSW party with us and take home one of these amazing prizes!
We’ll be sharing our experience at SXSW with you on our Instagram, so be sure to stay tuned and follow us as we take over Austin again this year. Good luck to all the participants in the Scavenger Hunt; we’ll see you again on Friday when we announce the winners!
Sammy6000.xyz – Tucows customer (United Kingdom)
We always love seeing another creative professional using an.xyz domain to display their personal achievements and talented skills. In the past we’ve brought you the digital animations of SoaLee.xyz, the visual novel ghost adventure of Ghostpia.xyz, and the 3D art pieces of Lumatic.xyz. But for this week’s #WebsiteWednesday we’re excited to feature an intriguing new creative designer currently residing in London, Sammy6000.xyz.
Sam Jacobs, or better known as Sammy6000.xyz, has achieved a lot in the design space across the globe. In Shanghai, China he helped to co-found a creative agency called Jellymon, where he resided as the creative director for 9 years. After much success they were even able to open up a second office in Beijing. During this time he also co-founded China’s first street art gallery Da>Space. But this past year he took on an exciting new challenge: Creative Director at the world-renowned news station The Guardian.
“I wanted to create a portfolio site that stood out, on which I could show off an edited selection of my projects. I would like to develop the site further in the future, but I don’t have specific goals beyond having a nice place to put my work.
[I chose to build on a .xyz domain] because .com seems boring and predictable. It also sounds old fashioned. A .xyz domain sounds fun, cool and is really memorable. It just matches my style more and what I wanted to get across with my site.”
– Sam Jacobs of Sammy6000.xyz
During this impressive career climb, he has been able to work with multitudes of big name companies, such as Adidas, Nike, Converse, and Red Bull. He was even able to land the first ever design collaboration with a Chinese State-Owned company, The Shanghai Watch Company. But his hard work doesn’t stop at just design, he also has done research projects for BMW, Hennessy and Apple.
We love the uniqueness of our #GenXYZ community and are proud to give everyone an easy way to express themselves online. The best part about art is that every piece is new and different, and what better way to stand out than with an .xyz domain? So why wait, check out right now to see if YourName.xyz is available, and show the world your passion!
ViceRoyal.xyz – Network Solutions customer (United States)
Our #WebsiteWednesday series is filled with artists behind some of the biggest brands and entertainment projects in the world. There’s Xand.xyz’s art direction on ad campaigns for Adidas and Nike, JHill.xyz’s character animation on Titanfall, SoaLee.xyz’s VFX animation in The Last of Us and Uncharted, and HBO’s microsite for it’s critically acclaimed hit show Silicon Valley on Hooli.xyz, just to name a few. This week we’re highlighting another creative member of #GenXYZ who has worked on many of the biggest films and games of the past decade: ViceRoyal.xyz.
ViceRoyal.xyz is a portfolio site displaying the work of JP Monroy, art director at leading VFX animation company Whiskeytree. JP’s list of credits working on box office smashing movies is nearly endless, including the Iron Man, Hunger Games, Captain America, and Thor series, The Avengers, Rango, The Revenant, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, The Big Short, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and many more. JP has also worked on some of the most popular video games in the world as well, including League of Legends, Best Friends, and Need for Speed.
JP also uses his site to show off his original works of fine art, including paintings and drawings inspired by many different styles and artists. The split between JP’s personal and professional works of art on ViceRoyal.xyz are a display of the two halves of his life as an artist, and a unique way he utilizes the personal portfolio site format.
“It had been a while since I had my work up, so I thought this portfolio website would be a great way to consolidate my commercial work in VFX and my personal projects. Showcasing all my work with a tailored interface will hopefully allow me to collaborate with other artists and keep my creative output up to date.
I chose a .xyz domain I spend most of my days staring at 3D software, having the X,Y, & Z axis in the name felt appropriate.”
JP Monroy, Creator of ViceRoyal.xyz
Your .xyz domain is what you make it, and JP has made his ViceRoyal.xyz domain into a site that projects his art and vision just as far as the movies he’s worked on have. What’s stopping you from making your own personal site and projecting your own passion to the world? Join JP and register YourName.xyz today to get started showing your talents to the world.
When you’re building any website, there are a few hard and fast rules that will always apply. It doesn’t matter whether you’re making something simple like a website for your wedding or something more complicated like a platform to connect members of your organization, the basic principles of “how to build a website” are the same for everyone. In this blog post we’ll share the basic best practices for building a website that you should keep in mind.
Best Practices for Building a Website:
When most people start building a website, the common mistake they make at the start is focusing first on very specific aspects of their site, like choosing a background picture or deciding where to put a certain block of text. While these things do matter, spending too much time on them will make a website less organized and add a great deal of time to the process of building a website. What you should do instead when you start to build a website is:
The “big picture” pieces of your website will be determined by Step 2…
An example site map:
Think of your site map as the skeleton of your website. The bubbles and lines in your site map are the bones that connect everything you build on your website together. When you build your website map:
Nielsen group estimates that you have about 10 seconds of a visitor’s time to get their attention and keep them on your page. Having huge, unbroken blocks of text on your site is a basic error often made when building a website, and unfortunately it can be one of the most damaging as it gives your visitors reason to navigate away. To avoid this error when you build your website:
Think back to your site map and the main goal you had when you set out building your website. The pages at the end of each line in your site map should have a direct call to action that accomplishes the overall goal you want from the people who visit your site. Below are a few examples of good, clear calls to action:
After you’ve built your website strategy, drawn your site map, optimized your content, and placed your calls to action, the last consideration you need to make is the overall feel of your website. This is where you need to give special attention to images, stylization, content placement, and anything else that comprises the “aesthetic” we discussed in at the beginning of the post. Think about:
Learning how to build a website that perfectly accomplishes everything you envision is not as difficult as it seems. If you keep these website building best practices in mind, your website will look and feel exactly how you want and will attract the visitors you’ve targeted for it.
This is the first in a series of blog posts we’ll be sharing about best practices on the web, so stay tuned to learn about everything from picking a domain name to making your website secure. You can also head to gen.xyz/101/build-a-website for more in-depth information on how to build a website including logo design, using HTML/CSS, and more. Be sure to check back next month when we’ll discuss how to make your website mobile-friendly. Until then, head over to our YouTube channel to see more internet “how to’s”.
TheLushLife.xyz – OpenSRS / eNom customer (United States)
Happy Valentine’s Day #GenXYZ! Unfortunately we can’t give every one of you flowers and chocolates, but with the help of this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, we can make sure you plan a perfect Valentine’s Day and choose just the right wine for the occasion: TheLushLife.xyz.
Sarah Tracey is a certified sommelier based in Brooklyn who offers her expert wine advice via her column on MarthaStewart.com, and also serves as Wine Director for Michelin-starred restaurant Rouge Tomate Chelsea. Outside of those two very impressive arenas, you can find Sarah’s wine recommendations on her site TheLushLife.xyz, featuring her blog that is full not only of sage wine advice, but tips on everything from boozy gift ideas to style guides to get the wine country look. After soaking up all the sage advice Sarah offers on her blog, you can also check out her media appearances, explore her tips for which accessories to get and celebrations to try to live the lush life, and even book a private tasting with Sarah herself!
Creating a brand requires time, skill, and a serious passion for what you do. Sarah possesses all of these tools, and she has mastered using them to make TheLushLife.xyz the perfect destination not only for her audience to find the right wine, but to live their best “lush” lives. Do you have what it takes to launch your brand? If you’re up for the challenge, get started with your own .xyz domain today and follow Sarah’s lead to make your impact on the world.
