What Is a Domain Name?
Choosing a domain name and then paying $8 or so to use it for a year is one of the first of your tasks when you decide that you want a website or blog. Websites have names just as babies do and the new owners of a website often go through a lot of reading research and worry to get their website name right much as the proud parents of a new baby do.
First some basics – you have to pay to get a domain name. You can regard that as a fee for the paperwork involved or rather for the behind the scenes bureaucracy.
Second ; when you name a baby the baby is named for life. You don’t have to renew the name every year but with a website the fee you pay gives you the domain name for 1 year or 2 years only and after that you will lose the name if you do not renew it. And when I say lose that means that someone else could grab the domain name ; no it’s not your domain name now; and use it on their site! And for a business that could be very costly mistake because the visitors and customers who were finding your site will likely be landing on the website of a competitor who now has what used to be your domain name. You buy domain names at a domain name registrar and you may be able to select an option there to automatically renew the domain. All well and good but it your responsibility to note the renewal date and make sure that all goes smoothly. Then there is the matter of what to call your website. You can get some ideas for that by writing down the purpose of the website or blog and some of the things that will be on the site. For a blog about a hobby the domain name could have some words that mean something to someone else who pays or watches the sport. For a commercial site then maybe a name modelled around what you sell or the professional service you supply. Above all it should be easy to say and easy to spell and remember. You want people to be able to tell their friends about your site and the domain name has to be simple. Although this may take a while and some effort too it is well worth the effort. For a business the domain name has to fit their overall branding and advertising strategy and getting it wrong may cost thousands. Should You Get the “Dot Com” Flavour? Building websites faces you with a series of puzzles to sort out. Having decided that you want a website and chosen a name you find that further complications await you..yes what flavour to choose? You get to choose between registering your brand new blog all about cutepuppies cutepuppies.com, cutepuppies.org, cutepuppies.net, cutepuppies.info as well as a whole raft of other possibilities. What to do? Received wisdom is to go for the “dot com” version and that’s fine but often you’ll find that someone else has it already. After that you can try the “dot org” and “dot net” flavours! What Is All This Talk of Flavour Anyway? The proper name is “domain extensions” and com is short for commercial and is entirely neutral about what country you are in and what your website is for. In the early days of the web universities were the leaders onto the brave new virtual world and they had domain extensions of dot edu in the US and .ac.uk in the UK. Then organisations wanted websites and .org is the extension some of them use and .net is often used by internet companies. But if you want cutepuppies.com for your blog and someone has it then you can purchase cutepuppies.org or cutepuppies.net or cutepuppies.info there are no hoops to jump through. But I Want My Website To Be a Dot Com! Lots of ways to do that! First you could simply offer the owner of the domain name you want “a financial inducement”. That may work. You can also backorder the domain. When it comes up for renewal they may forget and your backorder might snag it. Much much easier to call your website Verycutepuppies.com and other alternatives or even cute-puppies.com. Hyphens may not look cool but they are fine in a domain name. With a little creativity you can get a domain name but remember it is your business and it’s sound running that makes the money you want. Having a cool domain name is probably a very small part of the enterprise.
Filed under Domain name by on Nov 24th, 2011. 
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