Domain name and Domain Name Registration
Choosing a domain name is a very important part of your website success. It is most important for business users but individuals shouldn’t disregard a proper domain name as well. Your domain name is the way for Internet users to locate you or your business online. Domain name is your address on the web.
You might have heard of first level domains, second level domains and third level domains. Let’s see what they stand for.
First level or top level domains (TLDs)
TLDs cannot be registered by general Internet users. TLDs are at the top of the hierarchy of the domain name system (DNS) of Internet. We all know the most popular of them: .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ. For the full list of available TLDs please refer to http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/
So the suffix of any Internet address is the top-level domain. If you are operating a business and interested to grow your business and attract more customers to your website, you will consider using .com, .biz, or .net. Sometimes the domain name you really wanted is already taken in the TLD you prefer. In that case, you may check to see if it is available at a different TLD like .net, .biz etc.
As internet is expanding day by day almost all countries around the globe have their local TLDs such as .uk for United Kingdom, .ie for Ireland, .fr for France, .in for India, .us for United States.
Second level domains
When we refer to “registering a domain” we usually mean registering a second level domain (mysite.com or bestsite.net). Second-level domain registrations can have their own limitations at country specific level, like you might need to be a resident of the country or have substantial business connection to the country of the TLD where you are seeking to register a domain, but registration of a domain in the core group of generic top-level domains (com, info, net, and org) is open for all.
Important things to know about domain registration and renewal
The most important thing to remember is that you cannot edit your domain name. Once it is registered (and it happens within minutes usually) it cannot be undone. All domain sales are non-refundable. So if you made a typo during the registration, you will have to register and pay for a second domain if you want it to be spelled differently.
It is also important to renew your domain on time. Users usually get plenty of notices from domain registrars about the renewal due in good time, so if you are interested in keeping your domain, do not wait till it is past due because it will cost around ten-fold of an annual fee to get it back if it falls into redemption period. Redemption period is a period of 30 days after the domain expiry date during which you can still recover and extend your domain.
Another valuable thing to know is that third level domain registrations are free and you can register hundreds of them (ex: mymail.mysite.com or testing.mysite.com or even www.mysite.com).
Understand your web hosting needs
Once you have decided on your domain name and made sure that this domain name is available for registration it is time to take a look at what exactly do you need in terms of web hosting. All the packages that you were browsing for will generally have the 3 primary characteristics:
- How many domains you can host (how many websites you can put into one hosting account)
- Disk Space (The amount of space available to you in terms of Megabytes and Gigabytes. It is exactly the same as on your PC or laptop)
- Bandwidth
Let’s look at them deeper and try to understand what you will really need.
The number of websites that can be hosted on one hosting account
The majority of entry-level hosting packages come with one allowed domain. What does it mean for you as the end user? It means that if you would ever decide to start a second website you will need to buy a second hosting package, therefore it is wise to plan ahead. If you plan to have 3-5 websites within 1 year of the date of your web hosting purchase, you should consider a plan that will allow you to host at least 3. Ask your web hosting provider of possibilities to upgrade in case you need more to host more domains or need more resources. It is usually cheaper to upgrade one and the same account than to have multiple.
Disk space
Disk space or in other words storage size in website hosting language indicates the amount of hard disk space a website hosting provider allows you to use for your websites or web pages. It means that all your documents, images, databases etc. must fit into the space storage.
When you are ready to launch your website you can easily estimate the disk space that is required for your website. You can check it easily on your local drive in your computer. Just open windows explorer, right click on the folder in which your website is located and choose “Properties”. Your website will take the similar amount of disk space on the server of your provider. If your website is dynamic (i.e it is using a database) you need to add database size to that number. Add another 50-100MB for logs and emails. If you plan to grow your website over the time, multiply your result by 2 and it should be enough for you for at least 6 months. In general, most shared hosting accounts easily fit into 1GB of disk space.
Bandwidth
One should never confuse disk space with bandwidth. We have already discussed disk size in the previous paragraph; let’s now try to understand what the bandwidth is.
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that your websites visitors can download from your websites. You can easily estimate the amount of bandwidth for your website if you know what information you are going to put on the webpages and how many visitors you plan to have monthly. You can also ask your website hosting provider to help you to get an estimate for your website if you are unsure but general rule of the thumb is that bandwidth should be not less than the amount of disk space multiplied by 10.
If your website goes over bandwidth limit, you will need to buy more. If you want to avoid the risk of going over a monthly bandwidth limit, you should look for website hosting providers who offer unlimited or unmetered bandwidth.
So, now armed with all that terms above you are all set to go and find your hosting provider.