If you desire to establish a web site, this implies that you need a domain. A domain name is a human-memorable name that you write in your browser’s location bar when you wish to pay a visit to a given web portal.
Why Do You Require a Domain Name?
This is a subject I approach because of the fact that last week my boss came up with the idea of establishing a website for our brand new project. That itself is not an issue, the issue is that he needs a site, but does not know yet what it should look like, what it should include, etc. All that he mentioned to me was the name of the web site – its domain. Thus, we now have a web address for a yet-to-be-established website and nothing aside from that.
The Domain
Each website is located on a physical server. That physical server has its own physical address, popular also as an IP address. Accessing a web site by typing the IP of the physical server in your browser, however, is not the best and most appropriate thing to do, so that was how and why domain names appeared. So, a domain corresponds to an IP address on the web. After it has been registered, that is.
Registering a Domain Name
To register a domain name, you first have to settle on a domain name registration provider. Lonex Hosting has an optimal solution for my present and prospective projects – they have a Domain Manager plan, which can be easily upgraded to a web hosting package later on – when my boss finally makes up his mind about what function the website will have.
Thus, to register a domain name, you have to select a name for your web site. Then, you have to pick a TLD – this is what follows the dot. For instance, in ‘usatoday.com’, ‘.com’ is the top-level domain name (TLD). Obviously, ‘.com’ denotes ‘company’, ‘.net’ denotes ‘network’, ‘.org’ denotes ‘organization’, and so on and so forth.
After you’ve selected your domain and your future domain name registration provider, you need to examine whether the domain name you wish to register is free, since somebody else might have seized it before you, however unpleasant it might be. Each domain name registration provider, including Lonex.com, has a tool at their signup page, which checks the availability of a specific domain name. To move ahead with the registration of a domain name, you have to specify some registrant info – the name, the address, the email and the phone number of the domain name’s owner.
You’ve Registered a Domain Name… Now What?
I registered .com, .net, .eu and .org domains for our venture, according to the desire of my still-unsure-about-the-purpose-of-the-future-website boss. I tested the domain name management dashboard Lonex.com is offering and found it very convenient – everything is neatly ordered and, from what I saw in the hosting Control Panel demo at their website, after we upgrade to a dedicated web hosting plan, it will stay the same, just with a lot more functionalities.
This, thank goodness, will spare me quite a lot of inconvenience from having to manage my domain name and web hosting user account separately. So, while waiting for the boss to make up his mind about at least what the website should comprise, I was pleased to find that the domain administration tool offers DNS management and domain name renewal options, and – an extremely handy functionality (!) – a parked domain template, which I used in order to set up a «Coming Soon» page for our domains.
Country-Code Top-Level Domains
I was rather pleased to discover that is offering a lot of country-specific TLDs, since the project the website is meant for is multinational. Country-code top-level domain names are handed over to local registry operators, which permit domain name registration suppliers to register domains, usually at rates that are cheaper than those offered to the end customers.
There are different country-specific domain names: .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .me for Montenegro, .de for Germany, .us for the United States, .ca for Canada, .com.au for Australia, and so on. This, I assume, will make my boss happy since we will be able to build a local version of the website for each country where the project will be presented.
Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs)
A domain name usually is composed of two constituents – a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain Name (SLD). If you have domain.com, for instance, «.com» is the TLD and «domain» is the SLD. There are several categories of Top-Level Domain Names that you should examine prior to picking the domain you desire.
Your pick should be based on the intention of your web site and on its target spectators. Let’s explore the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domains – these are the most popular Top-Level Domain Names aimed to indicate a particular function – .com (commercial establishments), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (companies), .info (informational sites), .org (organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific), .name (individuals or families), .pro (given professions), etc.
As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domain Names cover most spheres of life, so you should go for the one that would depict the intention of your website best. There is no restriction as to who can register such Top-Level Domain Names, but some of them contain additional steps to prove that you qualify to possess such a Top-Level Domain (.mobi and .pro, for example).
Country-code Top-Level Domain Names (ccTLDs)
The ccTLDs, or country-code Top-Level Domain Names, are country-specific Top-Level Domains. Each country has its own ccTLD. Choosing such a domain name is good if your target group of site visitors is from a specific country. Many folks would rather purchase goods or services from a local web page, and if your aim is Canada, for example, getting a .ca domain could boost the visits to your web page.
URL Redirects
You can register different TLDs, which can send your website’s visitors to a specific site like domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and decrease the probability of someone pilfering your visitors by using the same Second-Level Domain with another TLD – if you are not utilizing a trademark.
Name Servers (NSs)
Every domain name has domain name records. The name server records (NS records, aka DNS records) display where the domain is hosted, in other words they point to the hosting vendor whose name servers (NSs, also known as DNSs) it is utilizing now.
You can alter the NSs of your domain whenever you want. You can have your domain registered with one provider and get the web space hosting service itself from another. So, if you register your domain name and detect decent web hosting packages somewhere else at a later time, you can point your domain name to the current provider’s NSs instantly.
Domain Name Server Records (NS Records)
On the whole, as long as your domain name utilizes a specific pair of NSs, all its name server records will direct to the same web space hosting distributor. Some web hosting distributors, though, permit you to modify given domain name records, among them the A records and the MX records of your domain.
The A record is an IP address, which displays on which hosting server your site is hosted, whereas the MX records display which web server tackles the e-mail accounts related to your domain name. For example, if you engage a new web page designer and he build an .ASP web site that will be accommodated on his private Windows hosting server, you may want to edit just the Internet Protocol address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. In this way, www.domain.com will point to the Windows hosting server, but your e-mails or any sub-domain names like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your present Linux web hosting account.
The .ASP platform is created by Microsoft and necessitates a Windows server, although a Linux web server would be far more reliable.
Reasonably Priced Domains Supplied by ResellersPanel
Only a few web hosting providers allow you to edit particular domain name server records and quite often this an additional paid service. With ResellersPanel, you have a vast assortment of Top-Level Domain Names to select from and you can modify all DNS records or redirect the domain names through a forwarding tool at no extra charge. That is why, ResellersPanel would be your best pick when it comes to administering your domain names and to establishing a successful presence on the Internet.