This paper summarizes the consensus of opinion in various discussions between the two authors who are hand on IT professionals with experience in website strategy.

You may notice that after entering www.netscape.com (or netscape.com), your browser would return http://home.netscape.com. Here netscape.com is the domain name and http://home.netscape.com is a web site address or URL. With a single domain name, Netscape builds a family of URLs using the generic name http://xxxxx.netscape.com where "xxxxx" can be "home", "help" etc.

Boon Kang has registered the domain name nantah.org for Nantah alumni. The choice of nantah.org instead of nantah.com has its reason. A .com domain name could be mistaken as a commercial entity (com means either commercial or company) with money making motives.

Currently, nantah.org has been set up with a host of URLs whose generic names are http://xxxxx.nantah.org as illustrated below:

http://www.nantah.org (or http://nantah.org)
http://friends.nantah.org
http://forum.nantah.org
http://ottawa.nantah.org
http://sydney.nantah.org
http://toronto.nantah.org

In July 2000, two new Nantah websites (friends and toronto) were set up. In the first week of August 2000, another natah website (sydney) went life. The alumni in Penang and Melbourne have indicated their interest to set up their own websites and perhaps more will come in the near future.

As the number of Nantah websites increases, their are two scenarios:

The first scenario is to provide no advice and guidance to alumni who want to set up their Nantah websites and let the number of domain names proliferates. Some of the domain names may not be easy to remember and hence defeat the purpose of setting up a website.

The second scenario to consider a common strategy for our websites to meet the technological challeges. This strategy is as clear as crystal. i.e. Use generic URL names with one and only one domain.name. Netscape does that and nantah.org does the same too.

It is our plan to keep developing nantah.org such that its functionalities are broadly divided into two catagories:

a) Central sites for major functions:

b) Individual sites to serve specific functions and presence. e.g. toronto.nantah.org. These sites are easily linked to any of the central sites mentioned above.

Where do we go from here? It is a choice between open and close strategy. It is a choice between outward and inward looking. We are confident that nantah.org represents an open strategy and is outward looking.

Without doubt, the strategy adopted by nantah.org is the right strategy. Netscape does not need more than one domain name. Why should Nantah alumni?

We have reservation on the idea of "official site"at this level, simply because it implies bureaucracy, control and power which will inevitably bring headache later, and it does not serve any practical purpose at all. There is not even an official unified body of Nantah alumni associations. Most local associations are loosely organized bodies without any protocol or regulation. why do we need an "official" website ?

We hope that our view will kick off discussions of website strategy for Nantah alumni to reach a consensus of opinion. Our email addresses are:

Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]

After the publication of this paper, Boon Kang sent email on 11 August to add additional information given below:

a). M.L. Sow (Su1 Yue4 Liang2 [email protected]) of Penang (he is the President of Penang Alumni association) and E.T. Lee (Li3 Yao4 Dong1 [email protected]) of Johore Bahru (he actually created the JB site at nantah.com) also contributed to the concept and development of nantah.org.

b). www.post1.com/~nantah was created in 1996 (therefore it has the honour of first Nantah alumni website), but the domain name nantah.org was acquired in this year although it was proposed and discussed a long time ago.


Editor: Comments of this discussion paper by alumni and friends are in http://forum.nantah.org.

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