Somehow you've found your way to internet, and if you're reading this article, then you are one stop closer to registering your first domain name. Whether you're looking to register a name for a personal blog, or for your online business, right domain name can mean difference between success and failure.

Once you are familiar with basics, you will feel confident enough to make a sensible decision, and find best domain name solution for your specific needs.

What is a domain name?

The best way to understand concept of a domain name is to think of it as a mask, or alphanumeric equivalent of an ip address. This mask allows you to access web pages on internet in an easy to remember way. For example domain name for this site is www.DomainBash.com. That is a lot easier to remember than something that looks like 24.195.85.161, which is what ip address that domain name is masking. Your domain name will essentially become your online identity, and how your visitors will be able to find your website in endless sea of sites that is web.

Understanding parts

Now that you have a basic understanding of what a domain name is, you are ready to understand individual parts of domain name. Again we will use www.domainbash.com for our example. The www stands for “world wide web” which encompasses all things accessible on internet. The second part, which is part where some minor creativity will help, is domain name – in our example, this would be domainbash. This, more often times than not, is also name of your website, or business. Last, we have TLD – Top Level Domain, or extension. There are various extensions available for your consideration.

TLDs In Depth

TLDs can be further broken down into gTLDs (generic top level domains) and ccTLDs (country code top level domains).

Generic Top Level Domains gTLDs

.aero – airport industry
.biz – business
.com – commercial, unrestricted
.coop – cooperatives
.edu – US education
.gov - US government
.info – informational, unrestricted
.mil – US military
.museum – museums
.name – individuals
.net – networks, unrestricted
.org – organizations, unrestricted

Country Code Top Level Domains ccTLDs

There are over 240 ccTLDs which correspond to country codes. Some ccTLDs offer open registration, while others restrict their usage. Some that offer open registration are .cc – Cocos (Keeling) Islands, .bz – Belize, and .ws – Western Samoa, to name just a few. See full list here. Using ccTLDs that are available to you in your area is a good way to get a quality domain name that suits your website or business.

Using a ccTLD is no different than using more popular gTLDs, and you will have a better chance of

A good domain name registration, particularly for an online business, (which is main focus of this article) is easily done, but at same time requires choices that will impact your site's effectiveness. So here, in no particular order, are some things to bear in mind when doing a domain name registration.

The extension - Will it be a .com, .net, .org, .info etc. Any of these will get spidered and indexed by search engines, but if you can get a .com for your chosen name you'd be better off, as this extension is more common and carries an air of legitimacy with it.

Try not to have you domain name registration with your web host. The reason being that should you decide to part ways with your host, (and this isn't uncommon!) it's potentially a massive headache to move your domain as well. Split them up: you'll be glad you did!