Domain names
What domain names are - and where to get them
When you write a letter to someone you have to use the recipient’s address to be sure that the letter goes to the right place. Every domain name is an unique “address” on the Internet. |
If you use www.sony.com as your “address” in your browser you’ll get - unsurprisingly - to the Sony website, and if you use www.ibm.com you’ll land at the IBM website.
In the first example sony.com is the domain name, and the “.com” (“dot com”) ending is called the Top Level Domain (TLD).
Dot com sites are international, and can be located anywhere in the world.
While “dot com” is the best known TLD you can also use other well known TLD’s like .net or .org
Most countries have their own TLD’s, so a domain like www.panasonic.jp would be a Japanese (.jp) website, www.mercadona.es would be a Spanish (.es = espania) site, and www.norway.no would be a site from - yes - you guessed it!
When you look for a domain name for your website you should try to find a short and meaningful name, preferably a .com-name. Most people find that shorter names are easier to remember!
As we mentioned your domain name is your address on the ‘net, and therefore it must be unique, no two domain names can be alike.
Your domain name can consist of letters and/or digits, and you can use hyphens if you like. You cannot use special characters like ?!#%&, and you cannot use spaces in the name. Domain names are not CaSE SenSitIvE.
Here are some examples of permitted domain names (the "links" are not going anywhere!):
www.12345-6789.com www.12afp34-for.net www.Go-to-My-site.org www.bestsiteintheworld.com www.THISISALONGDOMAINNAME.com
These name formats are not permitted:
www.mynew site.com (spaces not permitted!) www.what’s new.com (special character ' and space not permitted), www.hey_there.com (underscore not permitted).
You get the idea!
To search for, and register, an available domain name you must go to a domain registrar on the Internet.
When you find a domain name you like you must register it and pay a yearly fee, and if you pay more than $10 per year you are being overcharged. Some domain registrars will charge $15-20 and even more, but for a good deal we recommend GoDaddy
where you always pay less than $10 a year.
Your domain name must be linked to your web host's server, so you may need to change the Domain Name Server (DNS) record.
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The next step is finding a web host for your site.