Domain Name Blogger

Here’s a 7 point checklist to make sure to choose the right home to register domain names. Make sure to ensure that your domain name is in the hands of a reliable, reputable and professional company. You need to consider before buying a domain name how long they’ve been in business, that you control every aspect of your domain, and check if there are any hidden charges if you want to transfer a domain Also check if you get any free email accounts and how many, make sure you can use their SMTP servers for sending email, and always make sure you retain control of your domain names. 

Here are some being uses by the generic top-level domain (gTLD): 

dot info stands for information
dot com stands for Commercial
dot net stands for Network
dot org stands for Organization
dot us stands for United States
dot biz stands for Business
dot edu stands for post-secondary educational establishments 

Your domain name is your identity, your address and your work descriptor, all rolled into one. A domain name will be an easy to remember location to find you as well as have something to say about the nature of your work. 

For medium-to-large businesses, it may also register the most common variations of your main domain name. This will enable visitors to still reach your Web site even when they type a letter wrong, or hyphenate your domain name when searching. 

In ask for verification that the domain name is registered to you and not to your registration service provider. And some registrars will register a domain name as belonging to them, which can create problems when you want to switch to another service provider, or want to transfer the domain name.

Here are some tips on buying a domain name:
Make the domain name as specific and unique as possible.

Try and relate it as closely as you can to your core business, but it should be easy for people to remember. The domain name should include a keyword for your business or Web site as a part of the name itself. 

Choose your domain name.
When you choose a domain name make it short. Try and keep the spelling simple and straight forward. The single word domains are best, though two and even three-word combinations will also work provided that they can easily be remembered. Also try and register your domain as “dot com” and not “dot net, dot biz” or some other URL suffix. More people still associate most businesses with dot com. 

Select a domain name service provider or registrar.
When you have chosen a domain name for yourself, you need to visit the InterNIC Web site and choose a domain name service provider or registrar. 

Check for availability
In choosing the company which you will register your domain name, you will get on with the task of figuring out if the name you have selected is available. The homepage of the service provider you choose will be the one to provide a search box where you can type in the name you want. This search will determine if the domain name is available or not. The name you chose is not available the search results will usually offer some alternatives that are close to your original choice. 

Register
Once you have found a domain name that is available, you will fill out the Registration form and contact information as required. Provide real information for the registration details and you may be contacted for verification of ownership of the domain name.

When you buy a domain name, the registrar assigns a primary and secondary IP address to the name. An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a set of numbers like this: 12.345.678.90. Each computer connected to the internet has an IP address. Some have permanent IP addresses. A server has a permanent (static) IP address which identifies where your website will physically live.

When you logon to the net at home, your computer has an IP address. Some computer get a different number (IP Address) each time you logon. But web servers have permanent IP addresses and and so do domain names, and when you buy a domain, you need to tell the registrar the IP address or the domain name of the computer on which the site is. This info is sent to hubs and routers around the world that are called Domain Name Servers (DNS). When people enter your url into their browser, they will find your home page. DNS servers are like giant telephone directories that look up your domain name and find the IP address of the computer, and routes the browser’s call for a page to the right place.

1. Keyword research and how to choose good keywords

Keyword research is the most neglected step in website creation. A website can be perfected in everyway but is never useful if cannot be found in the search engines. If you are in the web design business, you want your website to be in the first page in all major search engines (namely Google, Yahoo and MSN). The sentence that you expect people to type into the search box to look for your website is your keyword.

2. Buy a domain name and a hosting package.

A Domain name is the unique name of a website. There are many registrars around and to register a new domain name can cost a lot and reach to the range from 4 to 30 USD per year. Domain Name Registration and Web Hosting is a different thing. A domain name service provider stores your domain name and points it to the web host which stores all your web pages.

3. Create your web pages.

Creating a webpage can be hard or easy. If you want the codes in your web page to be clean and optimized for search engines, you need to have to hand-code HTML. If you are not bothered with the codes and you may to create a webpage quickly, you can use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). The latest method, can help you to create a web page easily, produces a lot of junk codes which may result in unpredictable results in different browsers.

4. Upload your website.

The host must store all your web pages in order for them to be viewed online by others. To upload all your web pages from your computer to the server. A common way to do that is via FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

5. Optimize your site for search engines.

A guide has prompted us to continue with the next most important topic of creating an effective website, SEO - Search Engine Optimization it is also used interchangeably with Search Engine Optimizer. In short, seo is the process of improving your website ranking in search engines so that people can find your site more easily.

6. Monitor your website traffic.

Find a free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web statistic tool to measure your internet traffic: http://www.statcounter.com

A domain name is like a phone number, everything in it means something. That’s why a web address is called a URL, a Universal Resource Locator.

In the same way that phone numbers have country codes, area codes, 3-digit exchanges, main numbers, and extensions, a website’s URL can be split into meaningful parts.

Website names usually start with “http://”. It’s sort of like the country code. There are other prefixes: “http://” (notice the s) this tells the browser that the site is secure and information has been encrypted so you can feel safe when entering a credit card number or other private info. “ftp://” tells us also that the browser that there are files, like programs, to be captured and saved on your computer. In most browsers, if you leave off http:// it will insert automatically for you.

When a website is just promotional literature you can usually get rid of the http:// part and just list mybrand dotcom. When you write a URL in an email, it is very important that you include the prefix. A complete URL with the prefix, when typed in an email, will be delivered by a clickable link in the text that will automatically if clicking on it.

At the end of a domain name is a suffix of two or three letters called a “top level extension”. Dotcom and dotnet are the most popular for businesses. Dotgov is for government, dotedu is for schools, dotmil for the military, and dotorg is usually a not for profit organization. Some countries have their own suffix, such as dotca for Canada. A popular one is dottv, for the Pacific island of Tuvalo. Even though they are not located there, many broadcasters and communications companies use dottv.

Some new suffixes have been introduced because most of the good dot com names are gone. Dot biz and dot info are gaining popularity with businesses, and a lot of good names are still available.

These are suffixes may be available:

• .name - individual and personal websites.
• .pro - professions such as law, medicine, accounting, etc.
• .aero - services and companies dealing with air travel.
• .coop - co-operative organizations.
• .museum - museums, archival institutions, and exhibitions.
• .xxx - sex and porn.

Domain names have two uses. The first use is to setup a website. The second use is to set up your own custom e-mail address which can be done without ever actually setting up a website. Domain names can be expensive , but at the same time, they can be very affordable if you know what you’re doing.  

Here are some steps you can consider as in choosing the right company.

• By checking how long the company has been operating.
• Make sure that you can control every aspect of your domain name. Many domain name registration companies don’t let you make changes to your domains yourself. You need to enter a request via their support systems and then wait days for assistance. Like changing Name Servers. This should be possible via your control panel. Make sure you get a control panel and check out what the control panel lets you do.
• Some domain name registration and hosting companies can charge a release fee. Never be held ransom over your domain name. Every time you change hosts and transfer your domains, on gTLDs(.com, .net, .biz etc) you will have to pay a transfer in fee. You can avoid this by making sure you use a good domain name registration company in the first place.
• See it if you get any free email accounts. Domain name registration services do include free email. If you want email services with your domain name, some companies charge you for email. Choose a registration company which offers free email accounts.
• You should choose a domain name registration company that is ICANN accredited. They have to go through all the ICANN accreditation checks which is quite an in-depth process. Secondly, it’s not cheap! In this way you know the company is committed to Domain Name Registration as ICANN accreditation is a big investment and this should give you complete reassurance.
• Many hosting and domain name registration providers will not allow you to use their SMTP servers for sending emails. They assume you can send email via your ISP’s SMTP servers. A great many ISP’s and broadband providers will only let you use their SMTP servers on their branded email accounts. Choose the right Domain Name Registration provider who does allow sending mail via their SMTP servers. There are a number of the top hosting companies that will only let you use their SMTP servers on premium email accounts which incur an extra charge.
• Make sure you always retain control of your domain name. There are hundreds of businesses hosting their websites with a web host that are unhappy with. Poor service, surprise invoices, unreliable uptime and email issues are just some of the common issues customers are facing today.

A domain name registry is also called a Network Information Centre (NIC), it is a part of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet which converts domain names to IP addresses. An organization that manages the registration of Domain names within the top – level domain which it is responsible, controls the policies of domain name allocation, and technically operates its top-level domain. It has a potentially distinct from a domain name registrar.

Domain names are managed under a hierarchy headed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and also manages the top of the DNS tree by administrating the data in the root name servers.

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) operates the .int registry for intergovernmental organizations, the .arpa zone for protocol administration purposes, and other critical zones like root-server. IANA also delegates all other domain name authority to other domain name registries such as VeriSign. Country code top-level domains (ccTLD) also delegated by IANA to national registries like DENIC in Germany, or Nominet in the United Kingdom.

The co-operatives of internet service is the providers (such as DENIC of Germany) or not-for profit companies (such as Nominet of UK). The allocated and assigned domain names are made available by registries by use of the Whois system and via their Domain Name Servers.The registries sell the names directly like SWITCH of Switzerland) and others rely on separate entities to sell them.

The domain name registries operate the first – come – first – served system of allocation but it may reject the allocation of specific domains on the basis of political, religious, historical, legal or cultural reasons.Between 1996 and 1998 in the United States, the InterNIC automatically rejected domain name applications based on a list of perceived obscenities.

Registries can control matters of interest to their local communities like the German, Japanese and Polish registries have introduced internationalized domain names to allow use of local non-ASCII characters.

Intellectual property relates to items of information or knowledge, which can be incorporated in tangible objects at the same time in an unlimited number of copies at different locations anywhere in the world such as when hosted live on domain names. The “property” is not in those copies but in the information or knowledge 

In the 1980s, this led to the United States and other developed countries “forum shifting” intellectual property standard-setting out of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which later evolved into the World Trade Organization, where the North had greater control of the agenda. This strategy paid dividends with the enactment of Agreement on Trade – Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

In October 2004, WIPO agreed to adopt a proposal offered by Argentina and Brazil, the “Proposal for the Establishment of a Development Agenda for WIPO” - from the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization. A number of civil society bodies have been working on a draft Access to Knowledge or A2K, Treaty which they would like to see introduced.

In 1996, the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty, abbreviated as the WIPO Copyright Treaty, was an international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It provides additional protections for copyrights deemed necessary by knowledge monopoly dependent industries due to advances in information technology. There have been a variety of criticisms of this treaty, including that it is overbroad an example of its prohibition of circumvention of technical protection measures, even where such circumvention is used in the pursuit of legal and fair use rights) and it applies a “one size fits all’ standard to all signatory countries despite widely differing stages of economic development and knowledge industry.

The WIPO Copyright Treaty is implemented in the United States law by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). By Decision of 16 March 2000, the European Council approved the treaty on behalf of the European Community. The WIPO Copyright Treaty made no reference to copyright in the existing terms of the Berne Convention, but there was a degree of association. The United States Congress passed both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which enacts copyright term extension during the same week and used the same method using voice vote to make it less, the European Union adopted its own copyright term extension around the same time.

Domain Name Registers assist individuals with domain name registration and domain name renewals. Most registrars provide both businesses and consumers with an array domain name registration services that can create a web address and unique online identity quickly and easily.

More than 125 different top – level domains (TLDs) are able to be searched and registered. Most registrars provide domain registration in all the generic top – level domains TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .name) and country domain TLDs (.us, .de, .mx, .kr, .ca etc.).

While you register a domain name you are likely to find that all good names have already been registered. Since it is so easy and cheap to register a domain, most people register several domains that they think might be of interest. As a result in a large number of domains that are used only to display advertisements.

This means the first name you attempt to register already be taken. This is true especially if it involves well known names. The best way you can search is to find a completely different name or use variations on the main name you want to register. Some registrars will give you recommendations on your search results page if the name you choose is not available.

ICANN originally came from the United States Government. On the 30th of January 1998, the agency of the US Department of Commerce the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued a comment, “A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses”. The proposed rule making was published in the Federal Register on the 20th of February 1998, providing opportunity for public comment. In March 23, 1998 almost 650 comments were received by NTIA when the comment period closed.

The Green Paper proposed an action designed to privatize the management of Internet names and addresses. That allows the development of robust competition and facilitates global participation in Internet management. The Green Paper also proposed for discussion on a variety of key issues relating to Domain Name System (DNS) management including private sector creation of a new not-for-profit corporation managed by a globally and functionally representative Board of Directors. ICANN was formed in response to this policy. 

The Internet registries of 39 countries represented by Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR). They have rejected the increase and accuse ICANN of a lack of financial prudence and criticized what it describes as ICANN’s “unrealistic political and operational targets”.  Despite of this criticism, the registry agrees for the top-level domains .JOBS and .TRAVEL.

ICANN has also provided the ability for the public to register domain names like .MOBI and .CAT. In fact, the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia agreed not to get involved in the day-to-day and technical operations of ICANN. It is also agreed to set up an international Internet Governance Forum, with a consultative role on the future governance of the Internet. ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee (GAC) is currently set up to provide advice to ICANN regarding public policy issues and has participation by many of the world’s governments.