Did you forget your own name?

Written by Gary King


(Note to editor: Thanks for takingrepparttar time to review this!)

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======================================= This article may be freely distributed providedrepparttar 108270 author bio is included in its entirety. =======================================

Did you forget your own name?

Now before you go reaching for your identification to check who you are, let me reassure you… I’m talking about your domain name.

Forgetting to renew a domain name can result in HUGE headaches, including paying additional fees or even having a competitor or domain name reseller grab your prized domain name.

Depending on their goals, they may use your old domain name for their site, they may agree to sell it back to you at an exorbitant price, or they may even completely refuse to sellrepparttar 108271 name back to you, essentially holding it hostage.

Sure, there may be legal action you can take if you have trademarks in place, but that takes time- and during all this time, your site and your e-mail are down!

So, how do we avoid all of this inrepparttar 108272 first place? Roll up your sleeves and let’s get started, shall we?

=============================== #1. First, let’s check! =============================== Crank up your favorite web browser and visitrepparttar 108273 web site ofrepparttar 108274 registrar for your domain name, or just choose one fromrepparttar 108275 list below. These are just a few ofrepparttar 108276 registrars I could think of, not an inclusive list, and are simply in alphabetical order.

Dotster: https://secure.registerapi.com/services/whois.php

GoDaddy: https://registrar.godaddy.com/whois.asp

Network Solutions: http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml

Register.com http://www.register.com/whois_lookup.cgi

Once there, followrepparttar 108277 prompts to perform a whois search for your domain name.

Verifyrepparttar 108278 expiration date for your domain name, and put a reminder on your calendar (RIGHT NOW) to renew it at least 30 days prior torepparttar 108279 date given forrepparttar 108280 current expiration.

If you are already within that 30 day window, renew your domain name while you are thinking of it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

=================================== #2. The expiration process =================================== All is not lost if your domain name has expired. There is a period of time after its expiration that you can still reclaim your prized possession.

Here’s how it works.

Onrepparttar 108281 date that a domain expires,repparttar 108282 registrar removes it fromrepparttar 108283 root servers (the list of domains currently registered globally); therefore, any web sites or e-mail associated withrepparttar 108284 domain name will begin to stop working.

At this point,repparttar 108285 domain has entered a 30 day period calledrepparttar 108286 “Redemption Period”. The redemption period is a grace period that allows you to re-register your domain name inrepparttar 108287 event that you simply overlookedrepparttar 108288 expiration date, didn’t receiverepparttar 108289 expiration notice, etc.

What is a domain name and why would I want one?

Written by Ewan Bain


In this article we will coverrepparttar basics of what a domain name is, how they work and why you need to have at least one. I am going to try and avoid complicated computer terms and stick to explanations that should be easily understood by someone without a computer science degree.

What is a Domain Name? Before we can go into what a domain name is I'm going to tell you why we need them asrepparttar 108269 answers compliment each other. The Internet is just a really big collection of connected computers (a network). Forrepparttar 108270 purpose of explaining domain names you can think ofrepparttar 108271 Internet a bit likerepparttar 108272 phone system and just likerepparttar 108273 phone system every computer onrepparttar 108274 Internet has it's own phone number except an Internet phone number is called an IP addresses. This address is made up of up to 12 digits inrepparttar 108275 form 123.123.123.123, computers use these IP addresses to send information to each other overrepparttar 108276 Internet.

Whenrepparttar 108277 Internet was first created it quickly became clear that these IP addresses were not easy to remember and another method was need to make these addresses more human friendly. The solution to this wasrepparttar 108278 Domain Name System (DNS). Basicallyrepparttar 108279 DNS is a really really big phone book for computers. When you type a web site address into your web browser it checksrepparttar 108280 DNS for that website name and findsrepparttar 108281 IP address. Once it hasrepparttar 108282 IP address it can then send a message to that computer and ask it forrepparttar 108283 web page you wanted.

Ok so you know a domain name is part of a web site address but which part? Lets look at a website address so we can identify and discuss what bit of it is a domain name. http://www.itxcel.com/index.html

The above address isrepparttar 108284 home page ofrepparttar 108285 itXcel web site. It can be split into 3 main parts. The first part is http:// this just tells your web browser what kind of information it is going to get and how to get it. The last part is /index.html this is name ofrepparttar 108286 files onrepparttar 108287 remote computer that you want your browser to get. The bit inrepparttar 108288 middle www.itxcel.com is a domain name. This isrepparttar 108289 name that your computer sends torepparttar 108290 DNS to get backrepparttar 108291 IP address.

So you know what a domain name is and that there is a phone book calledrepparttar 108292 DNS to change your easy to remember domain name into an IP address that you computer can understand. The Internet phone book (DNS) is special in that everyone onrepparttar 108293 Internet needs to be able to use it. This makesrepparttar 108294 DNS very very big (100+ million addresses big). Due torepparttar 108295 size of this phone book it needed to have a carefully organised and managed structure.

Domain names themselves are split into different levels like a hierarchy. The DNS system uses this hierarchy to searchrepparttar 108296 DNS forrepparttar 108297 IP address ofrepparttar 108298 domain name it is trying to find. The last bit of a domain, inrepparttar 108299 previous examplerepparttar 108300 com part is calledrepparttar 108301 top level domain. There are a large selection of top level domains like com, net, org and info. There are also very similar endings called country level domains like uk and de. Each ofrepparttar 108302 top level and country level domains are managed by a different organization, sometimes these are companies or non profit organizations and sometimes governments. Inrepparttar 108303 domain business these organisations are referred to asrepparttar 108304 registries. Each registry looks after it's own part ofrepparttar 108305 domain name system. If you decide you want to use a domain name inrepparttar 108306 top level domain com, like mycompany.com you would have to have this name assigned byrepparttar 108307 registry that manages that top level domain (for .com a US company called VeriSign). The process of being assigned a domain name is called domain registration.

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