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SKILL.md
npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill domain-strategy
Plan, manage, and optimize a domain portfolio. Use this skill for DNS architecture decisions, redirect strategies, registrar choice, parking unused domains, multi-site setups, and domain consolidation or split planning. Triggers on DNS, domain, registrar, redirect, parking, subdomain, apex, www vs non-www, multi-site, portfolio, hreflang setup, domain migration. Also triggers when planning a new site that needs domain decisions made before launch.
npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill domain-strategy
Decide how domains, subdomains, and DNS work across a portfolio. Stack-agnostic. Works for one site or one hundred.
content-migration)email-deliverability)security-baseline)internationalization)Every domain decision falls into one of these buckets. Address them in order.
Pick one. Redirect the other to it. Pick before launch. Changing later is painful.
Whichever you pick, the other must 301 to it. Both serving content is duplicate content and a soft signal of poor setup.
For a new product, blog, or content section:
| Pattern | Use when |
|---|---|
Subfolder (example.com/blog) | Same brand, want SEO equity to flow, default choice |
Subdomain (blog.example.com) | Different stack or platform, organizationally separate but related |
Separate domain (exampleblog.com) | Different brand, different audience, intentional separation |
Default to subfolder. The case for subdomain or separate domain has to be made.
The registrar is where the domain is registered. The DNS provider is where DNS records live. They can be the same or different.
Decisions:
The DNS provider controls how domains resolve. Critical for performance, reliability, and security.
Pick a provider that gives you:
Default DNS records every domain needs:
Domains you own but aren't actively using. Three valid strategies:
Anti-pattern: letting parked domains serve duplicate or near-duplicate content from your main site. This is an SEO liability.
Pull every domain you own from every registrar. Build a single sheet:
| Domain | Registrar | DNS provider | Status | Role | Renewal date | Notes |
|---|
If you can't account for every domain, the strategy can't be accurate.
Each domain gets one role:
The classification drives the configuration.
For each domain check:
Document gaps. Each gap is a ticket.
For new domains and any that need fixing:
curl -I http://example.com, curl -I http://www.example.com, curl -I https://www.example.com. All should chain to a single 200 on the canonical.Across the portfolio, document every redirect:
| Source | Destination | Type | Reason | Date set |
|---|
This is invaluable when something breaks or when planning consolidations.
Monitor:
This is the bridge between domain strategy and monitoring-and-alerting.
Domain strategy is a quarterly review topic. Renewals, consolidations, and new launches change the picture. Without scheduled review, the portfolio drifts.
Both apex and www serve content. Duplicate content. Pick one, redirect the other.
302 redirects where 301 was intended. 302 is temporary. 301 is permanent. SEO equity passes through 301, not (reliably) through 302.
HTTPS not enforced. HTTP variant serving content alongside HTTPS. Force HTTPS at the edge or the load balancer.
Registrar default parking pages. Parked domains serving registrar ads. Free for the registrar, bad for you. Replace with a redirect or your own page.
Domains in multiple registrars by accident. Migrations that didn't fully complete. Consolidate.
No CAA records. Anyone with a misconfigured ACME client can issue a cert for your domain. CAA limits which CAs can issue. Add it.
Auto-renew off "to save money." Domain accidentally drops, gets snapped up, costs ten times more (or is unrecoverable). Auto-renew is cheap insurance.
Subdomains used where subfolders would have been better. SEO equity gets fragmented across hostnames. The case for a subdomain has to be made; the default is subfolder.
Parked domains with thin content "for SEO." Search engines don't reward this. They penalize doorway pages. Either redirect or leave blank.
A domain strategy document includes:
references/dns-record-reference.md: Common DNS records explained, with the syntax for the most useful ones (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, CAA, SRV, etc.) and when each is needed.