Register Your Web Site Name with Domain Name Services
Audience: Small Business Owners
Purpose: This articles covers the basics of website names
Author: Jonathan Bailey — © Bailey & Hall 2006 Article Date: 2006-09-14
Last Updated: 2007-03-06
Introduction | Choosing a Registrar | Choosing a Name
.com/.net/.biz | A Word About WWW
Introduction
Domain Name Services (DNS) or registrars are the companies concerned with the name of your web site — like "ashdesign.net" or "comcast.net" or "irs.gov". Without going into too much detail these parts of a web site address are called domain names and they must be leased from an Internet Registrar.
In the past who could register a domain name was very tightly controlled and there were very few companies that did this. Since the industry was "deregulated" the number of internet registrars has increased dramatically and the price of registering your web site domain has gone way down.
Choosing a Name
There are a lot of web sites. Billions and billions of them as Carl Sagan used to say. Okay perhaps not that many, but there are a lot. This means you may not get your first choice of names. Try to be creative and choose a name that fits your business and is as short as possible. It needs to be something that customers can type from memory.
.com/.net/.biz 7mdash; What Does It All mean?
There aren't a lot of real distinctions between the main root domains (.com, .net, .biz, etc). .biz is supposedly restricted to commercial or business sites, but the usage on the others is more a convention than a hard restriction. Traditionally .org is used by non-profits and .com is for business. There is a perception that .net is for tech firms but this is far from the truth. You can find more information on these rules at register.com
Choosing a Registrar
We don't have a hard and fast recommendation on registrars. It's a pretty straightforward business and you shouldn't have much trouble with whomever you choose. Three that we have used in the past without issues are: www.register.com, www.domainmonger.com and www.godaddy.com. Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) is the cheapest of the three, and as a large, financially solvent company can be expected to be around for a while. Wading through their marketing effort to actually buy the domain can be a bit of a chore but is worth the savings. All three sell other services — such as email and web hosting. Consult with your web developer so that you are sure not to buy something you don't need.
Most if not all registrars now have a useful feature that will not only check to see if a name is taken but make recommendations for available alternatives if it is.
A Word About WWW
The first three letters of an internet address are often www as in http://www.yahoo.com. The www is a convention (though back in the mists of time I think it wasn't). It can be replaced by almost anything or nothing at all. For example if you type http://yahoo.com you will be taken to the same web site, but if you type in http://sports.yahoo.com you are taken to YAHOO!'s sports news portal. The first piece of a web address (in this example "www" or "sports" is called a subdomain and IS NOT controlled by a registrar. You are usually allowed a number of free subdomains (of your choosing) when you purchase your web hosting.
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