Domain Name Registration: A Guide
November 3rd, 2009 | 
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Are you thinking about starting an online business? If so, the first thing you need is a place for your website on the World Wide Web: you need to get a domain name, and for that you will need to go the route of domain name registration. With the explanation in this article, I hope that you will be able to understand the necessary steps in the process.
What does a domain name do? It gives your site an internet address. With the Domain Name System (DNS), domain names exist out of four parts: a server prefix, the domain name itself, a domain extension and a code for your country (the last one is optional). For example, www.jasssony.com as domain name, then ‘www’ is the prefix, ‘jasssony’ is the domain name and ‘com’ is the domain extension.
An example of a domain extension is ‘Dot-com’, this is a top level extension. You have generic top level domains, the gTLDs, and you have top level domains with country code, the ccTLDs. There are a lot of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and hosting companies that willl offer you domain services for free or with a high discount. Essentially, this will give you a domainname that is an extension of theirs. Example: if your ISP is called “domainswithus” then you would get a domain name that looks like this: www.domainswithus.com/jass/index.html. When you register your own domain name, you should choose an extension name that looks professional., you will also always have to change the ISP or web host.
A lot of people don’t realise this, but the names used on the internet do really matter. You should choose a name that identifies your business, and that is also very easy to remember. Lots of people type in the name, or even just a part of the name, in a search engine to find the site they are looking for. In most cases the best, or obvious, domain names are already registered by others.
When doing your domain name registration, think about if you want to use a country code extension, or rather a generic top level domain name. This choice depends in most cases on the market for your product or service. If you are marketing globally you could use .com, if you are in the UK and market to the UK solely you could use the country code for the UK specifically.
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