To register a domain name yourself you will need to choose a Registrar. A Registrar is an ICANN accredited domain registration company. There are hundreds of Registrars on Internet nowadays. The market is becoming increasingly competitive; which means that you can purchase domains names for a low yearly fee.

Most web hosting companies will offer domain registration services to their clients. When you register a domain name through a web host they will register your domain name for you through their own approved registrar. An advantage to having your web host register your domain name for you is that, they have probably done this process many times before; they have all necessary information ready at hand. This process will save you time and, as long as you give ‘correct’ domain name desired, there will be no unfamiliar dealings with Registrars.

Why should I keep my domain name registered? If you loose your domain name you can loose your whole online identity.

Because you can only register a domain name for a year or so, you will need to make sure that you renew it before expiry date. Once your domain name expires you will no longer own that domain name. Your Registrar will then own it and be able to sell your domain name to highest bidder. To make sure you don’t loose your domain name you will need to make sure you renew your domain name at least two weeks before it expires.

Also make sure that your information is registered properly, especially if you didn’t register your domain name yourself. Ensure that your information is displayed as registrant, administrative and billing contacts; most importantly make sure that email addresses for these contacts are ACTIVE. When you receive any information about your domain name, such as renewals, price changes, etc… an email will be sent to this email address. If you can’t receive any mail from email addresses listed under domain names contact then you are at risk of not receiving important notifications about your domain names, which could result in loosing your domain name.

People often miss importance of having their own unique domain name for their web sites. A domain name represents you, your company and your online presence; as does a ‘business card’. If you don’t have your own domain name you won’t be able to promote your own online identity and web site on World Wide Web.

By Candice Humbley Fast, reliable Windows 2000 web farm hosting. http://www.m6.net

.gov – Generally used for government agencies.

.int – Intended to be used for sites relating to International Treaties or containing international databases. For this reason, it is not widely used.

.mil – Mainly used by military organizations of US government.

.org – In general, non-profit organizations tend to use this extension.

.name – This is a new TLD and is intended to allow individuals to register their names (i.e. firstname.lastname.name) as a personal domain name on Internet.

.biz – This is a new TLD for businesses; ‘.biz’ is intended to be an alternative to ‘.com’.

.info – This is also new, and is freely available to anyone with a business, government or non-commercial site.

Written by Candice Humbley http://m6.net Fast, reliable and affordable Windows 2000 web farm hosting.