Select and Register Your Domain Name

Anyone serious about doing business on the Internet should have their own domain name!

If you are truly serious about marketing your business online, you should definitely register and get a domain name. We will be happy to register a domain name for you as part of our web design and/or hosting services, or you can register it yourself.

• It gives your business a professional and internet-established presence.
• Regardless of who hosts your site, the name will always belong to you (as long as it doesn't infringe on another company's rights) and your address remains the same even if you change servers.
  • Choose a name that is short, memorable, not easily confused with others, hard to misspell and that relates to your core business. The maximum allowed size is 63 characters, however, it is advisable that you keep the name as short as possible. Short domain names are easier to type and remember than the longer one.
  • It should be easy to pronounce and easy to spell -- make sure that it spells the same way as it sounds.
  • Domain names with special characters such as hyphens and underbars are harder to describe to the customers over the phone, and is a good reason to not use them. There have been instances where customers have been accidentally sent to competitors who have the same names without special characters.
  • If at all possible, choose a domain name ending in ".com" ("dot-com"). This is still the most widely recognized ending and the most popular. When typing in a domain name, most people will, by default, try .com first. The next popular ending after .com is .net -- but always try for a .com name if at all possible.
• The low cost for your own domain name is a small price to pay for the positive impression you will leave with your potential customers.

How to Register a Domain Name

The first step for the domain name registration process is to look for a domain name registrar, whether by word or mouth, by means of advertising, or through a search engine. Domain name registrars are companies that register domain names for those seeking them.

Your next step is to check the availability of your desired domain name. The domain name registrar then communicates with a domain name registry to ascertain if the desired domain name is still free for purchase or the desired domain name is already taken by a third party. If the domain name is still available, you will next enter your contact information and the (DHS) Domain Name System information for the desired domain name. The registry will enter your contact information in the Whois database. Also, the registry adds the zone documents to the master servers, which transmits the information on how to locate the domain name consumer’s site.

You may want to also understand the role of domain name registration and ICANN, or the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

ICANN has two main responsibilities. One is to oversee the Domain Name System or DNS for the purpose of validating the division of the IP Addresses and domain names, verifying that each one is distinct. Secondly, the ICANN is responsible of accrediting the domain name registrars. Once the domain name registrars are accredited, it is then a duty of the domain name registrars to sign a contract and agree to bear by the ICANN’s guidelines and procedures.

Recommended Domain Registrar

GoDaddy.com

Deleted Domains

Sometimes a great source for domains names are DeletedDomains that others have registered at one time but either failed to renew or allowed to expire. Every day, valuable domain names come up for renewal and every day, the owners let them slip away.

Technically, once expired, all names are available. However those that have expired in the past 45 to 60 days are in a grace period. Prior owners are given the chance to make good on their payment. If they don't, and the grace period expired, the name is "deleted" from the master domain registry and is then available for purchase by others.

What are Domain Name Servers?

Domain name servers (DNS) play a vital role in the domain name process. Domain name servers are the internet service that transforms or translates the domain names into an IP or Internet Protocol addresses. These IP addresses are used by all machines to refer to one another. And every time that you use a domain name, you basically use the internet’s domain name servers or DNS to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address.

Now, don't mistake this translation of domain names to IP addresses as a simple task. There are five main things that make the task quite tough. One is the fact that there are billions or more of IP addresses that are currently in use. Secondly, along with the billions of IP addresses, there are many new domain names that are created every day.

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