Domain Name Registration Terms

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.