How important can an affordable domain be?

One of the most vital requirements for setting up a successful Internet presence is the domain name. It is what people will spot first when they come across your website and what they will identify you with. The domain should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that informs your web site's visitors what the web page is about.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

A domain traditionally is composed of two fragments - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain Name (SLD). If you have domain.com, for example, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain. There are several groups of TLDs that you should contemplate before you pick the domain name you desire. Your pick should rest on the intention of your website and on its target audience. Let's have a look at the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domain Names - these are the most popular TLDs aimed to signify a particular intention - .com (business establishments), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (businesses), .info (informative web sites), .org (organizations of a non-commercial character), .mobi (mobile devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific), .name (persons or families), .pro (given walks of life), and so on. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domain Names encompass most realms of life, so you should settle on the one that would depict the purpose of your website best. There is no limitation as to who can register such domains, but some of them involve additional steps to ascertain that you qualify to own such a Top-Level Domain (.mobi and .pro, for example).

Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code Top-Level Domains, are country-specific domain names. Each country has its own ccTLD. Choosing such a Top-Level Domain is good if your target group of website visitors is from a specific country. Many folks would rather buy commodities or services from a local web page, and if your aim is Canada, for example, getting a .ca Top-Level Domain could boost the visits to your web site.

Domain Forwarding

You can register a bunch of TLDs, which can send your site's visitors to a certain web page such as domain.com, for example. This would raise the traffic and decrease the likelihood of someone pilfering your website visitors by registering the same Second-Level Domain with a different Top-Level Domain - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each domain name has domain name records. The name server records (NS records, also known as DNS records) specify where the domain is hosted, i.e. they point to the hosting firm whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is utilizing now. You can replace the NSs of your domain at any time. You can have your domain registered with one firm and get the webspace hosting service itself from another. In this way, if you register your domain and find decent website hosting services someplace else afterwards, you can point your domain name to the current company's DNSs instantly.

Domain Name Server Records (DNS Records)

In general, as long as your domain uses a particular pair of DNSs, all its domain name records will direct to the same site hosting supplier. Some web page hosting vendors, though, enable you to edit certain name server records, among them the A records and the MX records of your domain name. The A record is an IP address, which indicates on which server your site is hosted, while the MX records specify which server handles the email aliases related to your domain name. For example, if you hire a new website designer and he build an .ASP web site that will be hosted on his personal Windows server, you may want to change solely the Internet Protocol address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. So, www.domain.com will point to the Windows web hosting server, but your mail address accounts or any sub-domains like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your current Linux webspace hosting account. The .ASP platform is designed by Microsoft and necessitates a Windows web hosting server, even though a Linux hosting server would be far more reliable.

Inexpensive Top-Level Domains Delivered by 'Exclusive Hosting'

Just a small number of web hosting suppliers allow you to modify certain NS records and very frequently this an additional paid service. With Exclusive Hosting , you get a large number of Top-Level Domain Names to pick from and you can modify all name server records or redirect the domain names through a redirection tool at no added cost. For that reason, 'Exclusive Hosting' would be your best choice when it comes to managing your domain and to building a successful presence on the World Wide Web.