Domain Names and Hosting

A domain name is a piece of virtual property. It is usually associated with a business, concept, or acronym of a name. The simpler the domain name the better. A domain name usually gives identity to a website, and is therefore related to the content.

A Domain name is obtained by visiting a registrar of domain names. There are many domain name registrars. Some are better than others. There are "mainline" registrars of domain names who pay a hefty fee to an organization that has authority to issue domain names - I guess it kind of quasi-government (the internet was started by the Government by the way). Registrars are authorized and accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

There are also sub-registrars (Resellers) who are affiliated with the larger registrars. They do like subcontract work. The names are really registered with the big registrar, but they make it look like your with the smaller company for business purposes. They still work fine though. If they go out of business the one above just picks up your name. You just have to get the business end situated again.

To find a domain name, you need to search and see if your domain name is already taken. You can do this at World's Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com
There is a nice feature here at Godaddy as you are able to also see the variations of your chosen domain name that are still available, if your domain name is taken already.

Be careful and do research before registering with a specific company. See what kind of complaints are out there and read good reports too. I once lost money and domain names because of poor service. GoDaddy has treated me well with good customer service regarding domain names.

If the domain name you want is not available, you can use the tool "Whois" to find out who owns the domain name. They may want to sell it. Also, there are many domain names that expire every day - like 20,000 of them or more. If you don't need a specific name, you can find some good domain names this way.

If you buy a domain name that has already been published previously, you can take advantage of pre-existing web traffic. You will need to do some research to see what kind of traffic it is or what country the previous site featured. Sometimes the traffic is worthless, but sometimes it is extremely valuable! People pay good money to get a domain name that has traffic already. Traffic equal dollars. Advertising dollars that is.

After you find that your domain name is avaible, you will need to register it with a domain registrar. I know I am biased, but GoDaddy is a good company with a good reputation. They make it all easy. You can register your domain name online or over the phone.

You will have to give the registrar all of your contact information, which has to be kept current. You must also pay the registrar fee, which occurs every year. It is cheapest and best to register your name for 2-5 years at a time. I am told that search engines see this as a good thing as well.

Be sure and get the ".com" extension if it is available. These are the most well known and popular. Also, they are easier to resell if you want to get rid of it later. Some people buy up any of the other extensions the domain name; like ".net", ".org", ".us", etc... that way nobody else has the same name. This is good if you are starting a business or something like that.

If you do not already have a business with a name that you need to register as the domain name, there are some tips for selecting a good domain name. Try to get some good "keywords" in your domain name. You can use "-" or "_" in the domain name, but no funny characters. If someone has "orangejuice.com" already, you could get "orange-juice.com" or orange_juice.com". See how many searches are done for your keywords. Pick the most popular.

now that you have your domain name, you will need to host it for other to see your web pages (got to make those too!)

Hosting is simply the service of somebody or company letting you put your stuff on their servers (big computers) for the whole World Wide Web to see! It is basically that simple. Well kind of.

A hosting company has a whole bunch of servers, a server "farm" actually. These servers are all linked to a large "backbone" to the Internet.

Sometimes the servers are not even at the company facility but in some other country. Its best to stick with hosting companies that have servers in their own country and your country. The internet is kind of segmented. So if there is a problem in the contection to other parts of the world, your locality might still be working. Stay in country.

Basically what you will be doing is renting space on the companies computers so you can store your web related documents and various files to be published. You will be connecting to their servers from your PC usually by "FTP" File Transfer Protocol. This is a small software application that is configured to talk with their servers via the internet or dial-up.

After you chose a hosting company, you will go the the website for your domain name and enter into your domain control panel there server information for your hosting company. This is the DNS - Domain Name Service. Your registrar sends this data to a central database somewhere that knows how to take your domain name and relate that to the DNS and point internet browsers to your hosting company's servers where your information is stored.

GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans


There are basically two types of hosting servers: Linux/Unix or Windows Server. This will be important for you to know if you ever decide to run advanced programs with your web pages. If you are thinking about running e-commerce applications, you will need to learn more about the features and types of code that you will be running.

If you are just publishing standard HTML web pages, there is nothing your need to worry about other than finding a hosting company.

There also several decent free hosting services available. Try to find the ones that give your free hosting without those annoying popup ads and things like that. The problems with the free services are that you get what you pay for.

A paid hosting server usually gives you the ability to get support when you need it. If you are new to web publishing, you will probably need this benefit. Try to find a hosting service that offers good support. Again, if you are just hosting basic HTML, you will probably not need much assistance. It is when complicated applications are used; things can get messy.

If you are looking to get into e-commerce, try getting a standard e-commerce package that fits your budget. These usually have a basic catalog feature available as well as checkout features. Also you will need to consider the different payment gateways that are available with the e-commerce package.

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