What are Domains

One of the most important prerequisites for having a successful Internet presence is the domain. It is what people will note first when they stumble upon your website and what they will associate you with. The domain should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that notifies your visitors what the website is about.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

A domain as a rule is composed of 2 fragments - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain (SLD). If you have domain.com, for instance, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain. There are a couple of categories of TLDs that you should consider prior to picking the domain you want. Your selection should be built upon the purpose of your site and on its target audience. Let's analyze the gTLDs, or generic TLDs - these are the most typical TLDs aimed to designate a given function - .com (business establishments), .net (networks), .biz (corporations), .info (informational websites), .org (not-for-profit organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia Pacific region), .name (persons or relatives), .pro (certain walks of life), etc. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domain Names cover most realms of life, so you should select the one that would show the purpose of your web page best. There is no limitation as to who can register such domains, but some of them include additional procedures to confirm that you qualify to possess such a Top-Level Domain Name (.mobi and .pro, for example).

Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code Top-Level Domain Names, are country-specific TLDs. Each country has its own ccTLD. Picking such a domain is good if your target group of site visitors is from a particular country. Many guys would like to purchase goods or services from a local website, and if your goal is Canada, for instance, registering a .ca domain could increase the visits to your web page.

Domain Forwarding

You can register a number of domains, which can send your website's visitors to a specific site like domain.com, for instance. This would boost the traffic and decrease the possibility of someone stealing your website visitors by using the same name with another Top-Level Domain Name - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each and every Top-Level Domain Name has domain records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) indicate where the domain is hosted, in other words they point to the web hosting company whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is using at present. You can switch the NSs of your domain name at all times. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the web hosting service itself from another. So, if you register your domain and detect good website hosting plans somewhere else later, you can point your domain to the current provider's name servers at once.

Domain Server Records (DNS Records)

On the whole, as long as your domain uses a specific pair of DNSs, all its records will direct to the same web hosting company. Some website hosting vendors, however, enable you to modify given domain name records, including the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an Internet Protocol address, which exhibits on which web hosting server your web site is situated, while the MX records indicate which hosting server handles the email box accounts associated with your domain name. For instance, if you hire a new web designer and he sets up an .ASP website that will be accommodated on his private Windows server, you may want to modify only the Internet Protocol address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain name. So, www.domain.com will direct to the Windows hosting server, but your e-mail boxes or any sub-domains such as forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your present Linux website hosting account. The .ASP platform is developed by Microsoft and requests a Windows server, even though a Linux web server would be far more stable.

Affordably Priced TLDs Courtesy of 'MyGreatHost'

Just a small number of web hosting companies enable you to edit particular DNS records and quite often this an extra paid service. With us, you get a large assortment of Top-Level Domains to choose from and you can edit all NS records or forward the domains through a redirection tool at no added cost.