Q1. Which characters are allowed in Internet domain names?

A: For normal ASCII domain names, letters a-z, numbers 0-9, and one special character, hyphen or dash "-". Note that domains cannot start or end with a hyphen. For new tested IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names), full range of Unicode characters are available. This allows nearly all of languages on planet to be represented within domain names, including Thai, Arabic, Lao, Hebrew, French, German etc.

Q2. How many characters can a Internet domain name have?

A: Generic domains (gTLDs) can have 63 characters in second level, plus top level domain, .com, .net etc.

Q3. How long can I register a Internet domain name for?

A: In most cases, you are allowed to register a Internet domain name for period of one to ten years. Longer periods are not currently allowed by registry.

Q4. How long do Internet domain registrations take to make & process?

A: Typically ten minutes or so. Once you have chosen name and paid fee, most registration systems will register your name in near real-time.

Q5. Do I "own" a domain name I register?

A: Not really, it is more like a rental agreement. But importantly, you have exclusive right to renew agreement with registry at end of initial registration period, so effectively you can keep name as long as you want.

Some of better ones out here will even let you use a nice Eye Candy control panel to help you manage your site. If your lucky they'll even throw in a website statistics app as well. For most web site hosting companies that's about it! Most web site hosting services won't bother giving you more service for you money.

To be honest most people (me included) always thought this was okay until we woke up and realized that there's a lot more to running a internet business than simply hosting our site.

I quickly realized there are some new companies out there that offer way, way more than other companies. Some of these web site hosting services are really raising bar several notches for all web site hosting services on internet.

In this short summary you’ll find some of features you need to be looking out for if you’re looking for a new web site hosting service or planning to transfer your web site.

You need to be on look out fore:

1) A web site hosting service that helps you add new domains for a small fee without having to pay any additional monthly fee. So you can host many domains and still pay one monthly fee, thus saving you money.

2) A web site hosting service that will help you publish and manage your own newsletter so that you can regularly follow-up with your prospects and customers and thereby increase your sales. Look if they give you option to publish a newsletter in both HTML and text format.

3) A web site hosting service that can set up an unlimited number of follow-up auto responders. So you can automatically follow-up with your prospects and send them a series of emails one after other on any day you prefer.