Domain Name Registration: Don’t Let Your Website Die the Slow Death
The whole process of registering a domain name, to many, sounds like a mountainous project. Much like registering a business, people try to stay away from it imagining there are dozens of forms to be filled out, countless time, and legal loopholes by the score to leap through. The truth is that the hardest parts of registering a domain name is choosing the actual name, and choosing which domain registrar or hosting company to use.
A domain name is the unique name for your personal or business website. It is the name by which your site will be known to individuals and internet search engines.
All top level domain (TLD) names are currently overseen by a company called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Top level domain names include .com, .net, .org, and many others. The ICANN accredits domain name registrars with directly registering domain names for individuals and companies, as individual users cannot register directly with ICANN. While the ICANN does not directly oversee country code TLD’s such as .au and .ca, many countries have elected to use the service.
The actual cost for a registrar to register your domain name is 6.86 USD to VeriSign (the registry manager for .com), and a 0.20 USD administration fee to ICANN. Keep this information in mind when you’re searching for a registrar or going through your hosting company. The average prices for registering a domain name range from 7.50 USD to 50.00 USD per year. Also keep in mind that the maximum length of time you can register a domain name for is ten years.
Using a registrar to register your domain name is a relatively simple process. First, you use a searching service (there are thousands) to determine if the name you want to use is available. If the name you want is used, try variations of that name or choose a different one.
Many registrar and hosting services allow people to “park” domain names. This is the process of “buying” a domain name without actually using it, or getting the name they intend to use in the future before it’s used by someone else.
You could also contact the current name owner and make an offer to buy it from them. Many hosts will put contact information for the name on a generic web page. For those who don’t, there is a process to query the official database called whois. With a “whois” command-line client, available on many registrar websites, a user can essentially look up the information about a domain name owner including name, physical address, email address and phone number.
After you have a name, it’s a short process of entering your personal or company information, paying the fee, and finding a host for your website.
Using the registrar’s service is usually more beneficial. The prices are usually lower than at hosting companies. The process of switching hosts is also easier. It can take weeks to transfer your domain from one host to another because of the official rules governing the process.
If you go through a hosting company to register your domain name, the process is virtually identical as using a registrar except that you’ll immediately be able to start building your website, and uploading the content you want. If it will be several weeks before the site is developed or ready, you don’t have to do anything. A message will usually appear saying, “This website is currently under construction,” if someone types in your site’s address.
Registering and owning a unique domain name is important. The name becomes associated with your “brand” much like a corporation. Many small business and personal websites get lost in the plethora of generic sites. If you wanted a product from Wal-Mart you would look for the wal-mart.com website. Just searching for the product you’re looking for would bring up tens of thousands of search results. The same applies to personal websites. Searching for yourname.com would only bring up a single result if you own the domain, and the only other results would be sites which link to yours or talk about it.
So don’t let your website die the slow death of obscurity and neglect.
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