How
To Register a Domain Name
SolveYourProblem.com Article Series: Web Site Design
Before you can start a website, you need to
come up with a domain name. The domain name is the name of
your site on the web the 'www.yourname.com' that people will
type in their browsers and see at the top of every page of
your website. Obviously, it's important to choose a good one.
Not Just Dot Com
Many
people don't realize, but the web has a lot more to offer
than just .com addresses. .com is primarily intended for
companies
(the 'com' is short for 'commercial') alternatives include
.org (organizations) and .net (intended for Internet service
providers). There are also kinds of domains that you can't
get for yourself, including .edu (educational institutions)
and .gov (government departments). In most cases, you should
be looking at .com if you're a 'real' company selling physical
products, .org if you're non-profit, and .net if you're web-only
but if you can get a good .com, it's often worth having just
for the prestige and recognition factor.
There are some addresses that have been made available more
recently, such as .name (for individuals) and .biz (for companies).
They aren't yet well-recognised, though, and both seem like
a bit of a joke asking customers to go to yourname.biz to
get to your business website just makes you sound dodgy, so
you should avoid it for now. You should also look out for fake
domains like .shop and .free, which are sold at some places
but won't be accessible by most of the Internet.
On top of all that, each country gets its own code, and is
free to divide it further how it sees fit. The United Kingdom,
for example, owns .uk, and has divided it into .co.uk (companies),
.org.uk (non-profit), and .me.uk (individuals), as well as
a few non-public areas like .ac.uk (academic) and .gov.uk (government).
If you want people to know where in the world you are, or you
can't get the .com name you want, a country address is a good
alternative.
Choosing a Name
Domain names aren't at all expensive any more, but millions
of them are already taken it can feel very difficult to come
up with one for your website. Here are some tips:
First of all, give up on any single word that can be found
in a dictionary. There are people monitoring these domains
constantly and buying them the moment they become available.
It's also not really worth trying anything under four letters
long, especially under .com, because you're deeply unlikely
to find one.
The best thing to do is to come up with a series of three
words or so that describes your website. You'll need to think
around this problem. If you're registering a business website,
you might want to include something in the domain to distinguish
it from other businesses with the same name the town where
you're based, for example.
If you want to get ranked high in search engines, it's worth
considering what your potential customers would be searching
for when you're registering your domain name.
If you're trying to register your own name, then you might
just be plain out of luck. Look at every kind of address you
can think of. One common trick is to register a domain in a
country where you don't actually live, and use the last two
letters as part of the domain Robert Smith, for example,
might register robertsmi.th, even though .th belongs to Thailand.
Finding a Registrar
Once
you've made a list of domains you're happy with, the next
step is finding a registrar: godaddy.com, namecheap.com
and registerfly.com are some of the cheapest out there right
now.
Really,
anything over $10 per domain is a rip off shop around. When you type your chosen domains into a registrar's search
box, they will tell you whether or not each domain is available,
and how much it would cost. Prepared to be surprised by some
of the truly obscure names that are already taken, but don't
give up.
Finally, when you're registering your domain, make
sure to put in genuine contact details, as it can be taken
away from
you if you don't. You should also remember the username and
password you use, as you will need them before you can point
that domain to your website.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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