Domain Names

If you are looking to establish your business on the web, a domain name is a must. Non profit organizations and individuals can also benifit from a domain name. But for a businesses domain names are usually (often incorrectly) associated with respectability.

What's a domain name

A domain name is a URL of the type domainname.com. Please note that www is not part of the domain name. This prefix is sometimes omitted, and Some times replaced with a different prefix (eg rs.internic.net). The domain name suffix could be any one of .com, .org, .net, .mil, .gov or a country specific suffix like .lk, .uk or .sg 

Acquiring your own domain name

The first step is to check the availability of your domain name. Type in your preferred domain name into the Network Solutions search box at bottom of this page (The old interNIC Whois is no longer available)

bookmark this page first, so that you can come back once the search is done. The interNIC or Network Solutions as they now call themselves is the central registry of domain name.

If your domain name is available the next step is to find an ISP to host your site. A list of ISP's are available on the Links page. The prices may range from around 10.00$ per month to 100.00$ a month depending on the services offered. A further US$ 35-70 has to be paid to the registrar. Each country has it's own registry to deal with country specific domain names.

Notes

There are several thing to watch out for when signing up for web hosting services. The most important is to make sure that the ISP list you as the Administration contact at the interNIC. Some unscrupulous ISPs get themselves listed as the admin. contact and make it difficult for the owner to switch ISPs.

Ask your ISP for a unique IP address. Some ISP's track several domain names to the same IP thereby reducing costs. But the downside is a very small percentage of web browsers are unable to resolve this addresses correctly. You might also find that your search engine ranking are lower than it should be. If the service does not include a unique IP the prices should be lower.

Be careful not to register a trademarked or copyrighted name that does not belong to you. And if you are a large company with several brand names it may be a good idea to register domains for all the brand names. (Small companies will not find this worthwhile). It might be worth your while to register with realnames.