By Clare Lawrence 29th September 2003 Clare is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd a leading UK Domain name registration service.

If your planning your own website, then your really need to consider getting your own domain name.

They aren't free but if your serious about building your own corporate or on line presence a domain name is one of best investments you can make.

The Domain Name System or DNS allows for computers to translate a series of numerical numbers in human friendly names. Names are easy to remember and therefore help to locate your website.

A domain name is part of address of a website and is known by technical term URL or Uniform Resource Locator.

Domain names are limited by international conventions and can not exceed 63 characters, certain characters are also not allowed.

By Clare Lawrence CEO Discount Domains Ltd, March 2003

Small countries such as Tonga, Turkmenistan and Niue are offering an alternative to customers that have been squeezed out of Internet as .com domain names have been registered.

It is sometimes unhappy task of a Domain registrar company, such as Discount Domains to tell clients that their preferred names in .com domain are already registered or must be purchased from a cyber-squatter for a large amount of money.

With anticipated opening of new domains, such as .eu, solution is often a longer, harder to remember name and less search engine friendly domain name.

The above countries allow users to register in their domain space. Web hosting companies can suggest that their clients register their sites in .to (Tonga), .tm (Turkmenistan) or .nu (Niue) domains, enabling them to get shorter, catchier name that was taken in .com domain.