Registering a Domain Name
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 realise, 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 (organisations) 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.