When you’re looking to set up a website, one of the first things you need to do is settle on a website name. This is what is known as your domain name. So, step one: finding a name that matches your business theme. If you’re a plumber, you don’t want a site called: woodworking-R-us.com! Next, try to avoid a domain name that’s very long; you don’t want people having to type in a huge long name to get to your website. Remember that the more complex something is, the more opportunities there are for them to get screwed up. So, the more letters in your domain name, the more chances there are for someone to misspell it when they are trying to type it in.
The whole prospect of misspelling brings up another point: similar sounding names. When you finally settle on a domain name, you might want to consider buying some of the names that are close to it. So, if you run an online jewelry company called “Jay Jewelry”, you might want to get: JayJewelry.com, JJewelry.com, and maybe even: JayJewels.com. As a little side note, a lot of big corporations own domain names that could be insulting to their firms; things like: BankofAmericaSucks.com.
Now, while the .com domain is one of the most popular domains, if not the most popular, there are plenty of other domains that you may find to be cheaper. A number of them are tied to various countries, and they’re a bit obvious. The .uk is the United Kingdom, .ca is Canada, .au is Australia, and then there are the .net, the .cc, and so on domains. Some domains are off limits to private individuals. The .gov is (rather obviously) US government websites, and .edu is for educational institutions.
Another thing to consider in selecting a domain name is shooting for something unique. If you pick a name too similar to another company’s – especially a rival company’s – people may accidentally type in their name instead of yours. So, an easy way to check on that is to just try typing the name into a search engine like Yahoo or Google. Once you find a domain name that you like, even if you don’t have your website ready, you should go ahead and grab it; get that name registered! It’s estimated that fully 97% of all words in the English dictionary have already been used. Now, when you consider that, if you use all English letters, numbers and symbols there are over thirty-one decillion domain names available. But, a name that’s a string of gibberish isn’t going to be very popular. So, find a name, find it fast, and grab it! The fee for a new name can be very reasonable, a .com will run you only $30 a year. Plus, if you elect to not use the name later on, you can always sell it. Popular domain names can pull in some substantial sums. As an example, the website business.com recently sold for seven million dollars!
When you’re intent on getting a website set up, you have to settle on a domain name, and get it registered. So, there are some terms you need to be familiar with. First, there’s the Registrar; this is the company you buy the domain name from. They’re companies like Register.com and GoDaddy, among others. Within those companies is the Domain Account Manager. This is the area you go to actually type in all of your information. Like any website you do business with, you’ll have a user name and a password. Going to this page, you can renew your domain name and carry out various other services.
Next is the Whois Information. This is all of your basic data about the website: who owns it, their contact information, when it was registered and when it expires, and so on. Then there’s the Registrant (or Owner) Contact. When you first sign up for the domain name, this is the first information you put in, and it’s very important. This is the information on who actually owns the site. If you hire someone to create a website for you, be sure they list you as the owner.
In terms of important information, just about the most important one is the Administrative Contact. This is an email address that you list with the domain owner, and the one that they’ll contact with any questions or matters concerning you website. So, it’s important that this be an email address that you’re not going to terminate anytime soon. A good idea with this email address is to use a free one like Yahoo or hotmail. If the address is tied to a pay website and you terminate your account, you have to be sure to go to your domain owner and change your administrative contact.
The Billing Contact is incredibly obvious; it’s the person the domain owner will contact regarding paying for the name you register, and the annual renewal fee. In terms of technical support, the domain owner will have a Technical (or Zone) Contact. A lot of times, if you hire someone to design your website, you’ll want to give the Technical Contact the name of your web designer.
And then there are two names that go together: the DNS and the IP. The first is the Domain Name Server or Domain Name System. This is the computer that takes your website name and converts it into an Internet Protocol (IP) Address. Much as computer languages like BASICA, COBOL and FORTRAN were converted to machine language so that the computer could actually understand it, DNS does the same thing with your website name. Thus when someone types in your domain name, the computer can then locate it on the appropriate web server.
So, when trying to get a good domain name for your website, be sure to pay attention to all of these factors. Each one is important in ensuring that you get the best name, get your information set up, and have everything arranged to maintain the site in the future.
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