What Happened to LA Lindy Hop?

LA Lindy Hop.com is now SwingDance.LA!  As much as I hate to mess with things, I had several reasons for the change.

The main problem was that very few beginners and people off the street had the slightest clue what “Lindy Hop” was.  When I would tell non-Swing dancers about the site, they would often ask, “LA Lindy-what??”

“SwingDance.LA”, although more generic, is much easier to remember (at least for those not already accustomed to “LA Lindy Hop.com”).  “swingdance.la” is also a lot more readable in written form than “lalindyhop.com”.

LA Lindy Hop.com was already #1 in Google searches for “los angeles swing dancing”, but “swingdance.la” should be much better for search engine optimization for other Swing dance-related searches.

Although I’ve grown accustomed to and fond of the “LA Lindy Hop” name (it was kind of cool that the term was only known to Swing dancers), I believe this change will be better for all, and will hopefully get more people into Swing dancing in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Originally, I had intended to have “swing” in the URL anyway, but all of the good ones were taken at that time.

This new URL was made possible by country-code top level domain names which are becoming popular for other uses.  The “.la” top-level domain in “swingdance.la” is actually for the country of Laos, but many Los Angeles companies, organizations, and even government agencies are using it. Apologies to Swing dancers in Laos for taking your domain name!

Note, this is a name change only.  Nothing else about the site will change at this time.  The Lindy Calendar will still be called “The Lindy Calendar” and feature all of the local Swing dance events that I know of.

Because it’s such a pain to change the name of a Facebook Page, my Facebook Page will still be called “LA Lindy Hop”, but will have the “SwingDance.LA” logo.

With a name change like this comes the possibility of introducing all kinds of problems, some of which I undoubtedly have not fixed yet.  Please bear with me as I switch everything over to “SwingDance.LA”.  Let me know if you see any issues or lingering “LA Lindy Hop” references.

If you have a site linked to lalindyhop.com, please change it to link to swingdance.la!  For the time being, lalindyhop.com will still take you to swingdance.la, but that won’t last forever.

If you have a chance, please re-“Like” any pages that you have enjoyed, as all of the Facebook Likes got blown away with the URL change (there is no way to move them).

But most of all, please spread the word about Swing dancing to your friends, family, and co-workers!  Thanks and keep on Swing dancing!!!

What do you think of the new name?  Please leave a comment below. – Brian