Domain Name

If you wish to set up a site, this means that you need a domain name. A domain is an easy-to-memorize name that you type in your web browser's location bar when you wish to go to a given website.

Why Do You Need a Domain Name?

This is a topic I bring up because of the fact that one week ago my boss came up with the idea of building a website for our brand new project. That itself is not a problem, the problem is that he wants a website, but has not made a decision yet about what it should look like, what it should consist of, and so on. All that he mentioned to me was the name of the web site - its domain name. Thus, we now have an Internet address for a yet-to-be-launched website and nothing apart from that.

The Domain

Each website is located on a physical machine. That physical machine has its own personal physical address, known also as an IP address. Paying a visit to a web site by writing the IP of the physical server in your web browser, though, is not the best and most convenient thing to do, so that was how and why domains came into existence. So, a domain name corresponds to an IP on the Internet. Once it has been registered, of course.

Registering a Domain

To register a cheap domain name, you first need to discover a domain name registrar. NTC Hosting has the best solution for my current and future projects - they have a Domain Manager plan, which can be effortlessly upgraded to a hosting package at a later time - when my boss eventually decides what purpose the site will serve.

Thus, to register a domain, you have to pick a name for your web site. Then, you have to pick a TLD - this is what follows the dot. For instance, in 'ap.com', '.com' is the Top-Level Domain (TLD). Obviously, '.com' denotes 'company', '.net' denotes 'network', '.org' denotes 'organization', etc.

Once you've selected your domain and your future domain name registration provider, you need to ascertain whether the domain you would like to register is free, because someone else might have grabbed it before you, no matter how unpleasant this might be. Each domain name registration supplier, including NTC Hosting, offers a search tool at their signup page, which verifies the availability of a given domain name. To continue with the registration of a domain, you have to specify certain domain registrant info - the personal name, the physical address, the email and the telephone number of the domain name's owner.

You've Registered a Domain Name... Now What?

I registered .com, .net, .info and .org domains for our project, according to the request of my still-unsure-about-the-purpose-of-the-future-site boss. I tried out the domain administration tool NTC Hosting is offering and found it extremely easy to use - everything is logically arranged and, from what I noticed in the hosting CP demo at their site, once we upgrade to a budget web hosting plan, it will stay the same, just with a lot more functionalities. This, thank goodness, will spare me quite a lot of inconvenience from having to administer my domain and website hosting account separately. So, while waiting for the boss to make a decision about at least what the web site should comprise, I was happy to find that the domain name management dashboard contains DNS management and domain name renewal options, and - an extremely convenient functionality (!) - a parked domain template, which I used in order to set up a "Coming Soon" page for our domains.

Country-Code Top-Level Domains

I was rather happy to see that NTC Hosting is offering a lot of country-code Top-Level Domains, as the project the website is aimed for is multinational. Country-specific Top-Level Domains are entrusted to domestic registries, which allow domain name registration providers to register domain names, typically at prices that are lower than those offered to the end users. There are a lot of country-specific domain names: .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .es for Spain, .se for Sweden, .us for the United States of America, .ca for Canada, .com.au for Australia, and so on. This, I am confident, will please my boss since we will be able to set up a local version of the website for each country where the project will be introduced.