Back to basics with Domains!

Here is a domain-related tutorial aimed at the complete newbie to buying domains, what scams should you look out for when buying domains and so much more.

Firstly I’ll go through the each subject we will cover in brief, in bullet-points, and then later down I’ll explain about each bullet-point individually.

• What the heck are domain names? – Doesn’t need to be a brain surgeon to know – you’ll find out about domain names, what they are used for, and the actual “ins and outs” of the whole system.

• Choosing a reliable web registrar is vitally important. Find out what registrar’s you should and should not go with.

• Choosing the right domain name is important, for example you won’t want ‘aaa.com’ as the domain name if your Website is related to fish, would you?

• Choosing the right domain name extension is another important thing you need to consider – but why? – find out below!

1.) Well firstly a domain name is a bunch of letters, numbers and hyphens that make up the domain name, for example www.eukhost.com – that is our domain name address that points to our homepage. The extension on our domain name is quite self-explanatory (.com). There are many domain name extensions around the globe – for example, country-code are 2 letter-worded extensions (example, .uk or .us) and there are many global top level domains (gTLD’s) such as .net and .org which can be technically registered by anyone as it’s “global” and not owned by a specific country. For instance, .UK domains are UK-based, thus the UK owns the domain extension. In-fact there are many other domain extensions such as .gov (which obviously can only be registered by governmental agencies) and .edu (for educational institutes). I found a useful Website that shows a listing of all the current TLD’s around the world (http://domainlinked.com/list-of-all-domain-name-extensions-tlds/). If you ever have heard of ICANN or the long-term Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – and as stated on their website: “ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers” – if you have ever come across a domain registration service – if the domain registration service is an “accredited registrar” then that means it is an ICANN approved registrar.

Have you ever heard about IP (Internet Protocol) addresses? Well every domain name has one. An IP address consists of numbers separated by periods (for example 82.98.762.45) – but all IP’s are a bundle of numbers separated with periods (a bundle of 4 - if that all makes sense). Unfortunately us humans won’t remember such long IP addresses and let’s face it – they don’t really explain in the least fashion what the site will be ‘expected’ to be like.

2.) Choosing a registrar to buy your domains from isn’t as easy as it may seem. Okay, the biggest registrar is Godaddy.com, and their prices are reasonably affordable – but you want to be buying domains from a company that provides responsive support via e-mail (within a few hours preferably) – because at any time there could be a serious problem which you may need to contact your registrar about – and would you be prepared to wait 24 hours for a response? Didn’t think so. You may want to take use of some registrar review sites to see other consumer reviews about the domain registrar you are considering – you never know, their services may be the best, but support as rubbish as a dust-bin! P.S. You may want to see http://www.namepros.com/registerindex.php for registrar reviews

3.) Choosing your desired domain name (and its extension) is fairly important as much as finding the right registrar is. Try and make the domain name relate to your Website – i.e. make the domain name more expectant (for example, eUKhost would presumably get you expecting to see something relating to UK Web hosting). Rather short domains are nice, but unless you are tricking them into mismatch typos or just to type it the domain name in randomly then short domains are pretty worthless. It’s best to have your website’s name as the domain name, though make sure the domain name is readable, easy to remember – and most of all, not too long. Unless its necessary to add numbers in your domain name, I do recommend avoiding it – it doesn’t particularly look nice in domain names.

4.) Now going onto domain extensions. A domain extension (as explained in the preceding sections) is for example .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .co.uk, etc. Now two letter worded domains are ccTLD’s (country code top level domains) and some ccTLD’s can’t be registered unless you are a resident of that specific country. The most well known and used gTLD’s are .com and .net. .COM is usually for commercial sites and .net for Internet related sites. .ORG is usually registered for non-profit charitable organizations, but could be also used for open source software organizations.

You need to know that .edu and .jobs extensions are strictly to those kind of sites alone and you need to comply to those rules.

Lastly, there are .gov domains (.GOV is usually for American government sites and gov.uk is always for UK government sites).

5.) Name servers usually look like ns1.domainname.com and ns2.domainname.com and they point to your domain name. Your Web host assigns you your name servers, and then it’s your job to assign them from your domain registrar’s control panel. Just think of name servers as strings that hold your domain name to your web hosting account!

Well I hope you have learnt something out of my latest article and hope you enjoyed it. This article is based for the beginners needing help and advice on getting started for their first domain name. Remember if you need affordable UK Web hosting contact us now 24/7 on 0808 262 0255.

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