How crucial can an affordable domain be?

One of the most vital prerequisites for building a successful web presence is the domain. It is what visitors will perceive first when they visit your web page and what they will associate you with. The domain name should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that notifies your site's visitors what the web site is about.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

A domain traditionally contains two parts - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain Name (SLD). If you have domain.com, for instance, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the SLD. There are a few sets of Top-Level Domains that you should consider prior to selecting the domain name you want. Your pick should be built upon the intention of your site and on its target visitors. Let's have a look at the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domain Names - these are the most common Top-Level Domain Names aimed to show a particular purpose - .com (commercial enterprises), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (firms), .info (informative web sites), .org (organizations of a non-commercial character), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia Pacific), .name (individuals or relatives), .pro (given walks of life), and so on. As you can see, these Top-Level Domains cover most spheres of life, so you should pick the one that would describe the aim of your web page best. There is no limitation as to who can register such domain names, but some of them contain extra procedures to prove that you qualify to keep such a domain name (.mobi and .pro, for example).

Country-code Top-Level Domain Names (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code Top-Level Domains, are country-specific Top-Level Domain Names. Each country has its own ccTLD. Picking such a domain name is good if your target group of web site visitors is from a specific country. Many persons would rather purchase commodities or services from a local web site, and if your aim is Canada, for instance, getting a .ca domain name could boost the visits to your web site.

Domain Name Forwarding

You can register a bunch of TLDs, which can redirect your visitors to a certain website like domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and decrease the chance of somebody swiping your web page visitors by registering the same name with a different Top-Level Domain Name - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Every TLD has domain name records. The name server records (NS records, aka DNS records) indicate where the domain name is hosted, in other words they point to the web hosting supplier whose name servers (NSs, aka DNSs) it is using at present. You can replace the DNSs of your domain name at any time. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the site hosting service itself from another. In this way, if you register your domain name and detect good website hosting packages someplace else afterwards, you can point your domain to the new provider's NSs straight off.

Name Server Records (NS Records)

On the whole, as long as your domain name uses a given pair of DNSs, all its domain records will lead to the same website hosting firm. Some web site hosting providers, however, enable you to modify given domain name records, among them the A records and the MX records of your domain name. The A record is an IP address, which designates on which web hosting server your website is situated, while the MX records exhibit which web server tackles the email mailbox accounts associated with your domain name. For instance, if you appoint a new web page designer and he sets up an .ASP website that will be accommodated on his personal Windows server, you may wish to change just the IP address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. Hence, www.domain.com will point to the Windows web server, but your emails or any sub-domain names like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your present Linux web hosting account. The .ASP environment is devised by Microsoft and requests a Windows hosting server, even though a Linux web hosting server would be far more reliable.

Cut-Rate Top-Level Domain Names Courtesy of 'butterflies'

Only a number of web hosting vendors enable you to modify particular DNS records and quite often this an extra paid service. With butterflies , you have a vast selection of TLDs to select from and you can edit all domain records or forward the domains via a redirection tool at no extra cost. For that reason, 'butterflies' would be your finest choice when it comes to administering your domain name and to building a successful presence on the web.