How vital is to find the best domain name?

One of the most important prerequisites for building a successful web presence is the domain name. It is what visitors will see first when they stumble upon your website and what they will relate you with. The domain should be easy to remember, but should also be something that tells your web site's visitors what the site is about.

Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs)

A domain name typically has two parts - a Top-Level Domain (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain Name (SLD). If you have domain.com, for example, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain. There are a few sets of Top-Level Domains that you should examine before you select the domain name you desire. Your pick should rest on the purpose of your web site and on its target audience. Let's take a look at the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domains - these are the most common Top-Level Domains intended to express a particular function - .com (commercial entities), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (corporations), .info (informational web pages), .org (organizations), .mobi (mobile devices), .asia (the Asia Pacific region), .name (persons or relatives), .pro (certain walks of life), and so on. As you can perceive, these TLDs cover most fields of life, so you should choose the one that would indicate the purpose of your web site best. There is no limitation as to who can register such TLDs, but some of them involve extra steps to verify that you are eligible to possess such a domain (.mobi and .pro, for example).

Country-code Top-Level Domain Names (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code TLDs, are country-specific Top-Level Domain Names. Each country has its own ccTLD. Picking such a TLD is good if your target group of website visitors is from a given country. Many individuals would sooner purchase goods or services from a local web page, and if your goal is Canada, for example, settling on a .ca domain could increase the visits to your web page.

URL Redirection

You can register different domain names, which can send your visitors to a given web site such as domain.com, for instance. This would increase the traffic and reduce the possibility of somebody snatching your web site visitors by using the same Second-Level Domain Name with a different Top-Level Domain Name - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each and every Top-Level Domain has domain name records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) specify where the domain name is hosted, i.e. they point to the hosting company whose name servers (NSs, aka DNSs) it is utilizing at present. You can replace the NSs of your domain name at any moment. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the hosting service itself from another. Hence, if you register your domain and discover decent website hosting packages someplace else at a later time, you can point your domain name to the new provider's NSs immediately.

Name Server Records (DNS Records)

In general, as long as your domain name uses a particular pair of DNSs, all its NS records will point to the same hosting company. Some webspace hosting distributors, though, allow you to edit given records, including the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an IP address, which demonstrates on which web server your web site is situated, while the MX records display which hosting server handles the email addresses associated with your domain name. For example, if you take on a new site designer and he sets up an .ASP web site that will be located on his personal Windows web hosting server, you may desire to edit just the IP address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain name. Hence, www.domain.com will point to the Windows hosting server, but your mailboxes or any sub-domains such as forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your present Linux hosting account. The .ASP platform is built by Microsoft and calls for a Windows hosting server, even though a Linux web hosting server would be far more reliable.

Inexpensive Top-Level Domain Names Furnished by 'Cheap Hosting'

Only a number of web hosting vendors enable you to modify given records and quite frequently this an extra paid service. With Cheap Hosting , you get a large array of Top-Level Domains to pick from and you can edit all NS records or forward the domain names using a redirection tool at no additional charge. Because of that, 'Cheap Hosting' would be your finest choice when it comes to administering your domain name and to establishing a successful presence on the Internet.