Domain-Names/Domain-Buying-Guide

Domain Name Buying Guide

Domain Buying Guide.

Choosing a domain name

Chosing a domain name has become really challenging in recent years, Sometimes one would hit random keys on the keyboard and find that the domain name he is pretending to look for is taken.

Here are a few almost mandatory things you need to do when buying a domain name

Do not buy the .net and .org for commercial websites, You really do not need them, Registrars always tell you that you do so they can sell you more domains, the truth is everyone tries the .com unless they are sure it is a different TLD.

Get the .COM, if you are a non profit organization and need the .org, get the .com to go with it, otherwise you would be giving away part of your traffic to the person that ownes the corresponding .com

Avoid hyphens at all costs, or you will be sending traffic to the owner of the hyphen-free counterpart domain, who may be your competition

Avoid commonly misspelled domains, if the domain has 1 common misspelling, register that misspelling and make it forward to your website, otherwise hard to spell words are a bad for domain names

Get your organization name or product name, i would advise you to chose a product name that has a corresponding .com vacant, prefixes and suffixes send traffic to existing domain names that you do not own

About this tutorial

The organization of this article is not as you would normally find it in a text book, this article starts with what you need to know about buying domain names and information about domain name registration, and proceeds to the technicalities as you go on, You can stop as soon as you have the information you need, the bottom line is presented first, then the explanations. Cheap domain names

On the list of ICANN accredited registrars, there are many big names, all providing Domain names, and many providing domains simply because they provide Web Hosting and internet infrastructure, others consider Domain Names there primary products. About 1,000 registrars are listed on that page, and let us call them "Tier One Registrars", The truth is, they are probably all good and reliable, and therefore the choice has to be based on other variables, like add-ons, and trust (a lesson learned from a registrar going out of business some time ago), and obviously price.

EasyWebDNS is NOT a Tier one registrar, Yet, it sells services from a well known tier one registrar (The largest by far), and the main advantage gained from buying from us is that you get the domains cheaper than the tier one registrar we sell for (Who is already the most inexpensive), you get your support from either the registrar or us (Up to you), and you get the extra tools we provide like checking availability by email or SMS etc.

When Network Solutions was the only registrar on the internet, You had very little choice, then competition came and Domain Name prices became cheaper and cheaper, Cheaper domain registrars provided domain names bundled with free services at a much lower price, a change pretty much welcome by almost everybody.

See the list of free additions with every domain name including E-Mail, Advanced DNS, DNS WildCard, Site Builder, Blogging tools, Etc... What TLD should i buy

Every registrar on the planet (Except for us), advises you to buy the .com, .net and .org TLD's, We think that this is a way to sell you more, and by no means as useful as it seems, I will explain why i say this in a while, meanwhile let me give you the second advice, If it is not a .COM and you are not a network or a non profit organization, Do not buy it unless you have to.

When your visitors want to come back to your website, they try the .COM first, So you would be advertising yourself and the competition would be getting the traffic, this is not smart at all.

As for not buying the .ORG and .NET, it is a bit complicated, Buying them has it's advantages, but those advantages usually don't apply to small projects Why not to buy the .NET and .ORG with the .COM

• They cost money

Why buy them

• in case you are selling a service and people start looking for your website by its name on google or other search engines, People who buy the counterparts to your domain can get an advantage with search engines, But coming to think of it they can buy the .BIZ or the .co.uk, so really, don't over estimate the importance of this.
• Some people like to separate sections on different websites, for example your users can login from the .NET, read information from the .ORG, and your business website on the .COM, again, this is not a huge advantage, as you can make sub portals under sub domain names (Recommended)
• In short, if you absolutely don't care about a few extra dollars in cost, get them, if not, get the .COM and do not settle for less than a .COM.
• A last note on the issue of TLD's would be, non profit organizations should buy the .ORG and buy the .COM to redirect to it, Networks should buy the .NET and get the .COM to forward to it, and if your "Must Have Domain" is only available in .ORG or .NET, Get that, search engines value Domains that are descriptive of content.

What Domain Should i buy

This is where things get complicated, it depends, it depends it depends.

the guidelines are as follows.

• Make sure it is easy to spell, misspellings send people to other websites, If you find $7.5 per domain cheap, and the name is necessary or very promising, you can buy all common misspellings of the domain and point them to the correct domain (EasyWebDNS provides tools to redirect domain names), Otherwise hard to spell domain names are no good news
• Avoid hyphens (Dashes) in your domain name, If you want to, You can get both with and without the dashes, but dashes send your visitors to the website of the person who has your domain with no dashes
• Easy to remember, and that is not necessarily the shorter version, For example, i would probably find it easier to remember stopsmokingnow.com and associate it with a smoker's support website than remember eqnh.com, even though the later is much shorter.
• Descriptive of your website, Search engines seem to count points on the website's name's relevance, and if your domain name is CandySummerParty2009 and people are searching for "Candy Summer Party 2009" you can expect traffic from search engines right away

Those are a few guidelines for you to chose a domain name, How the Domain Name System Works

now let me get to explaining how domain names work, although DNS has to do with many things like email and other things (SPF maybe), i will only explain how it works for websites, More info can be found on other pages for other things.

You open your web browser and type in the name of a website, Assuming your browser is the resolver for simplicity (And it never is, but again for simplicity), your browser calls the root nameservers, 13 proxy servers that have thousands of servers behind them to assist you in finding direction, So we query them for directions (Our resolver does for us, but again for simplicity), they respond with the address of the registrar, so our browser calls the registrar for information about the domain name, the registrar responds with the location of the authoritative nameservers, so our browser calls the nameservers, asks about the domain, the nameservers will tell the browser the address of the server that has the website and you can then download the page. So, how is the above relevant ?

EasyWebDNS provides all the services you see in the call above, Actually we provide everything from our upstream provider at a cost lower than they provide you with directly, and you get support from us and them at your choice (We will gladly tell you who it is if you email us, but we are not sure it is ok to state there name here)

So how it works is this.

1. You search for a domain name, a box is already provided at the top of this page
2. You register a domain name at EasyWebDNS, and any domains that need to redirect to it if any (See above)
3. You open your domain name control panel at easywebdns, and click every domain that is to redirect, then click on redirect and enter the domain you intend to use, You click the domain you intend to use, and here you have more than one option
   • If you want to host it at easywebdns, Change nameservers to "EasyWebDNS hosting servers", that is a radio button you select and hit OK
   • If you want to host it with someone else, your host will provide you with at least 2 nameservers that you can enter into fields provided at easywebdns
   • If you want to use some other hosting provider, yet you want to use the free DNS service from easywebdns, chose parked name servers, and then you can change the records from the Total DNS control link provided
   • If you want to use the automatic site building tools that come with a domain, Set your nameservers to parked then activate the service you wish, records will be created automatically
4. Using the features of easy web dns is really self explanatory, and we are there to help you if you need any help, this includes guiding you through the DIY websites, Just send us an email to support@easywebdns.com