Ever since before the Paint.NET software project began in early 2004, the paint.net domain was redirecting to http://www.warrenpaint.com. This is the website for Warren Paint & Color Co., a paint manufacturer in Tennessee. That’s a pretty good domain to own for that type of business, eh? It’d be like owning “bikes.com” for a bicycle shop or something.

Fast forward to yesterday, and a lot of people are still typing in “paint.net” into their address bar in hopes of finding the Paint.NET software. Unfortunately for them, they have always been getting redirected to the Warren Paint & Color Co. website. This has brought some extra traffic to the Warrant Paint & Color Co. website, but the problem is that they’re also getting daily e-mails from people either asking where the Paint.NET software is, or saying mean things and accusing them of cybersquatting or search hijacking. It’s been a bit frustrating for them.

Next, fast forward to today. In order to reduce confusion around the domain and to cut the guys at Warren Paint & Color Co. a break from answering e-mails that should be sent to me, we’ve worked together to set up a simple redirect page. If you go to http://www.paint.net/ right now, you’ll see this in place now. It basically just presents the logos for both websites and says, “Why don’t you just tell me where you want me to go!” *

So from now on, when people ask you where to get Paint.NET, just tell them to type it into their browsers! No matter which box they type into (URL, search), they’ll find it.

Thanks to Jeff for setting up the redirect over to the disambiguation page. Also, thanks to Graham Laing for facilitating the matter.

* Seinfield reference.