Blog

CommunityStudio.xyzeNom customer (United States)

If you’ve been searching for a more fulfilling way to spend your free time, there are few things that top giving back to the community you live in. Whether it’s by volunteering to renovate a local park or picking up trash to keep your town looking beautiful, when you give your time to your community it will be paid back to you by those you’ve helped. That spirit of giving was the inspiration behind the creation of this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, CommunityStudio.xyz.

Founded in 2013, CommunityStudio.xyz is a project that engages students in civic action which benefits their towns in rural Nebraska. The program began as part of the senior government class at Lyons-Decatur Northeast school, and over the years has seen participants propose and complete dozens of civic improvement projects. Some of CommunityStudio.xyz’s more notable accomplishments include repaving the walkways and driveway of the community’s Center for the Developmentally Disabled, building a disc golf course at the community park, and creating a group to write and send encouragement letters to children and teens in the town’s Children’s Hospital.

The CommunityStudio.xyz program is led each year by a team of students from Lyons-Decatur school who propose the projects, work with local businesses and organizers to put them in action, and complete a review once their project has been completed in which they summarize the impact the project will have and share their hopes for its future. If you want to learn more about the teams, they also keep a blog where they share their backgrounds, interesting facts about themselves, and updates on how the community projects are doing as time passes.

We can learn a lot from the attitudes of the CommunityStudio.xyz teams. Just as they’ve banded together and set out to improve their surroundings and the lives of others, we can look at our surroundings and find areas that we can improve if we just make the effort. Have something in mind that you’d like to change about your community, industry, or even yourself? Start the journey by sharing your plans and progress on your own .xyz site!

Alcova.xyzInternet.bs customer (Italy)

It’s no secret that Milan is the design hotbed of Italy. Once home to some of history’s most renowned artists (da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna), thousands of interior design professionals and enthusiasts now flock to the city every April for the awe-inspiring displays and installations that fill galleries and showrooms during Milan Design Week. Yet, some of the most interesting locations for art exhibitions aren’t in conventional galleries and showrooms at all, as proved by this week’s #WebsiteWednesday: Alcova.xyz.

Alcova.xyz is the home of Milan-based independent design platform, Alcova. Developed by two Italian design studios, Space Caviar and Studio Vedet, Alcova operates a network of exhibition spaces for artists to show their work. But Milan’s art crowd can venture beyond the usual gallery and museum spaces to visit these shows. Instead, Alcova activates “forgotten locations of historical significance” in and around Milan.

Have you tried Italian fruit cake? For Fuorisalone 2019, Milan’s Design Week that’s held every April, Alcova occupied two unconventional sites. The first was an abandoned panettone (Italian fruit cake) factory that was once owned by renowned Italian bakery, Giovanni Cova. The industrial space is now partly taken over by plants and vegetation, serving as a truly unique location for the contemporary art installations, screenings, and talks that were held there. A perfectly preserved cashmere factory from the 1930s showcased similar work as Alscova’s second chosen location.

Over 40,000 people visited the 2018 installment of Alcova’s Fuorisalone exhibition, and if the quality of their website is any testament to that of their exhibitions, we can see why. Every aspect of Alcova.xyz is aesthetically appealing and expertly designed for usability and functionality. The full-screen Fuorisalone graphic drifting across the homepage draws you in instantly, interrupted only by the uniquely placed vertical navigation along the left of the screen.

The most important pages are placed towards the top–Venues, People, and About–but our personal favorite is Images. The page leads you to a screen-filling slideshow of the April event photographs, and the left navigation is now joined only by the other pertinent information: photographer name, photo number, and a close button that takes you back to the homepage.

You can subscribe to the Alcova newsletter to stay updated on their future exhibitions, or email them at [email protected] for more information. Thinking about branding your business on a memorable .xyz domain? Secure it today!

Mee6.xyzNamecheap customer

Online gaming has connected countless people from across the globe since its earliest days, and the community has only grown in size and passion since. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday, Mee6.xyz, is making it easier than ever for gamers to create communities around the games they love.

If you’re an avid gamer yourself, chances are you’re also among the 250 million gamers who have their own Discord channels. For the uninitiated, Discord is a voice and text chat service created to give gamers a platform where they can create communities, coordinate strategies, manage long term quests and games, and hang out virtually with other gamers anywhere in the world.

With Mee6.xyz, those Discord servers come with increased control thanks to features like Mee6.xyz’s role assignment tool, custom server welcome messages, highly personalized server moderations, and even rank and experience point tracking. So if you have a group of friends you regularly play with, or manage a clan or party, then you can easily add new members into your group’s established structure with no disruption. If you manage a Discord server for chats other than gaming, Mee6.xyz is a great tool to assign custom name tags to members or add alerts so you know when your group’s favorite Twitch streamer is live or a new post has been made in your server’s favorite subreddit.

These features give gamer communities unprecedented freedom and customizability on their Discord servers by providing them with the features they desire most, much like the helpful TV character the service is named after, Mr. Meeseeks of Rick and Morty fame. The naming choice shows Mee6.xyz know their audience (gamers are among the most passionate Rick and Morty fans,) but is just one way they display their branding prowess. Mee6.xyz also owns Mee6Bot.com, a domain which automatically redirects to the shorter and more memorable domain Mee6.xyz.

As Mee6.xyz shows, lending a helping hand to the members of your passionate community is as easy as making your own website. Get more of Mee6.xyz on Twitter, or join their Discord server to see how they can help bring your gaming community closer together.

The second edition of the XYZ Quarterly for 2019 is here, and with it comes the second installment in our “How To Get Online” series: Establish Your Brand. Last month you learned how to find your niche, and this month we’re helping you connect with that audience in the best way possible.

Get the knowledge you need to develop your brand with our 4 tips on how to establish your brand, take a look back with us on .xyz’s journey as a brand as we celebrate our 5th birthday, and take note from .xyz community members who have established strong brands for their projects and businesses.

EmmaLewis.xyz123 Reg customer (United Kingdom)

It’s almost unfathomable to think about life before websites for creative professionals. The prevalence and expansiveness of the internet has truly set creatives free from expensive and limiting physical portfolios. Affordable domains and user-friendly website builders have made it easier than ever for artists to share their work with the world in a well-organized and stunning way, and this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, EmmaLewis.xyz, is the perfect example of that.

EmmaLewis.xyz is the online portfolio for United Kingdom-based professional photographer, Emma Lewis. As both an editorial and commercial photographer, Lewis travels across London and Somerset to shoot images for magazines and businesses.

On EmmaLewis.xyz, Emma’s photography is compiled by the three main photo types she specializes in: interiors, lifestyle, and portraits. Visiting the Interiors Page is like being a kid in a candy store for any interior design buff, with expertly styled home images that have been featured in popular interior design magazines House & Garden, Elle Decoration Country and Modern Rustic. Peruse the Lifestyle Page for a behind-the-scenes look at stunningly beautiful English craftsmanship, including a metalsmith, a ceramicist’s studio, and next-level floral arrangements. The Portraits Page is a testament to Lewis’ talent for capturing the true, unassuming nature of real people in their most content state.

Lewis’ ability to communicate clearly is not only evident in the photos that are displayed on her website–but with the .xyz domain name she chose to build it with. Emma Lewis being such a common name meant that when Emma looked for a domain to build her site on, she found EmmaLewis.com and even EmmaLewisPhotography.com were already registered. So she chose EmmaLewis.xyz, and was able to get exactly what she wanted; a short, clear, and memorable domain to showcase her work on.

If you like what you see in Emma’s portfolio, prints for select photos are available to purchase directly from her website. You can also drop her a line with her easy to remember email address, [email protected]. Thinking about creating a portfolio to showcase your work? Secure your domain today!