Important Things To Know About Domains Names

This article has been created to give website owners information about potential pitfalls regarding domain names. Your domain name is your property and should be guarded carefully.

 

What is a domain name?

In a practical sense, a domain name is the address on the internet for your website. The domain name for this website is 'www.perceptionweb.net'. By entering this domain name into your browser, the browser will be able to find the computer hosting our web server and the files on that server that make up our home page. For the user the process is very simple and familiar; however, there are a number of things going on behind the scene that make this whole process work.

Some Anatomy

Our domain name is composed of several parts. The '.net' part is the top level domain. There are a limited number of top level domains. The most common are .com (company), .net (network), .org (organization), and a number of country specific domains like .us (United States), .uk (United Kingdom), and .de (Germany).

'perceptionweb' is the second level domain. The second level domain is generally related to the business or organization name or keywords related to the products or services offered by the website. The combination 'perceptionweb.net' is know as the fully qualified domain name (FQDN).

The 'www' part is a subdomain. 'www' is a default or standard subdomain. If omitted, it is usually assumed by most browsers. Most people leave this part off of their business cards and only display their second and top level domain names.

When registering a domain name only the second and top level domains (the FQDN) are specified. You can have as many subdomains as your hosting service will allow.

Choosing a domain name

The first thing you will need to start setting up a website is a registered domain name. The first step in choosing a domain name is to do some market research to find out which keywords are most popular with respect to your products and services. Or you may simply want to use your business or organization name.

For the top level domain name choose a type that is appropriate for your type of website. For a business, try to get a .com. For an organization such as a non-profit, .org is most appropriate. If one of these is not available, other choices might be .net, .biz, or a country code like .us. Different rules and pricing may apply to different top level domains.

Domain Search Tools

One good way of finding which domain names are available is to use a domain name search tool like nameboy.com. Just enter your second level domain name as the primary search word and nameboy.com will will check the registry to find out which top level domain names are available with that second level domain. It will also give a list of variations of the name entered. If your first choice domain name is not available, use this tool to try different name and keyword combinations.

Similar Domain Names

Be careful of choosing a domain name that is similar to another website, especially a competitor. These two websites, www.myproducts.net and www.myproducts.com, could cause confusion among their customers. Most people, if they have to guess, will guess that the top level domain name is .com. This could result in some of myproducts.net's business being redirected to myproducts.com if they both sell similar products.

A Couple More Rules

Spaces are not allowed in domain names; however, dashes are permitted, e.g. vet-skill.com.

Domain names are also case sensitive; however, if VetSkill.com is entered into a browser, it will be converted to lower case letters. (This is only true of the domain name, not the names of any web pages that appear after the domain name; http://www.mydomain.com/myPage.html is a different web page from http://www.mydomain.com/mypage.html.) So it is fine to print your domain name on business cards or other literature with capital letters. If a user enters the upper case letters into his browser it will not cause a problem; however, this can sometimes give rise to unintended interpretations without the upper case characters: vetskill.com. It's just one more thing to think about when choosing a domain name.

Also, be aware that some fonts make it difficult to distinguish 'I' (as in indigo) from 'l' (as in llama) and 'l' (as in llama) from '1' (one). Keep this in mind if a site visitor has to enter your domain name into his or her browser by hand from your business card or brochure.

Registration

Registering a domain name is a simple process once a name has been selected. The domain name is purchased just like any other online purchase using a credit card. The registration fee is usually $10 to $30 per year for most top level domains. Be sure to use a ICANN accredited registrar.

Guard your account carefully and keep your payments up to date. Losing your domain name can be devastating.

Private Whois: Anonymous vs. Proxy Services

An option we recommend is domain privacy. This usually costs around $2 per year and protects you from spam. The registration and ownership information for all domain names can be accessed using a public database called whois. Among other things, a contact email address will be displayed to anyone or anything searching the database for your domain name, including spambots.

With a private domain, the domain registrar places their email address and contact information in the database instead of yours so they get spammed, not you.

Beware of proxy services. These services are advertised as privacy services; however, they do not give you ownership of your domain name. A good privacy service acts as a forwarding service leaving you with full ownership and control of your domain name. A proxy service actually registers your domain in their name and only leases your domain name to you. They also give much less protection from harassment since they are the legal owners of the domain, not you. A detailed explanation of proxy services is here.

Using a Third Party

Although registering a domain name is easy, the account and name servers still have to be configured for your website and email hosts. If this seems like a hassle, you may want to just have somebody do it for you. PWS will be glad to handle for you, but there are a few things to keep in mind if you would like or already have had someone register your domain name.

The most important things to do are to pay for the domain yourself, have a clause in your contract defining domain ownership, and get the user name and password to the account. Having your billing information on the account will help greatly in any ownership disputes.

We highly recommend that our clients read and understand this article from Dynadot.com in order to protect your online business. When done correctly, getting your prized domain name registered and protecting yourself from spam is quick and easy. There are just a few things to be aware of. PWS will be glad to answer any questions you may have.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, this essay has given some relevant information about domain names as well as saved your business from a few headaches down the road. Domain names are not complicated, but there are a few things to watch out for that can be costly later on. Be especially careful of ownership.

If you still have questions, contact PWS.