How essential can an affordable domain name be?

One of the most important preconditions for setting up a successful Internet presence is the domain. It is what people will mark first when they chance upon your web page and what they will associate you with. The domain should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that informs your site's visitors what the web page is about.

Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs)

A domain as a rule is composed of two fragments - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain (SLD). If you have domain.com, for example, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the SLD. There are a couple of sets of Top-Level Domain Names that you should examine prior to choosing the domain you wish. Your pick should depend on the purpose of your website and on its target audience. Let's have a peek at the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domains - these are the most common Top-Level Domains intended to show a particular intention - .com (business enterprises), .net (networks), .biz (corporations), .info (informational web sites), .org (non-profit organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia Pacific), .name (persons or relatives), .pro (given walks of life), etc. As you can perceive, these TLDs encompass most realms of life, so you should go for the one that would show the purpose of your web site best. There is no limitation as to who can register such domains, but some of them include additional procedures to show that you qualify to have such a domain (.mobi and .pro, for instance).

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 Top-Level Domain is good if your target group of visitors is from a specific country. Many folks would sooner buy goods or services from a local website, and if your goal is Canada, for example, getting a .ca domain could boost the visits to your web site.

Domain Name Forwarding

You can register a bunch of Top-Level Domains, which can forward your web site's visitors to a specific site such as domain.com, for instance. This would raise the traffic and decrease the risk of someone snatching your site visitors by registering the same Second-Level Domain Name with another TLD - if you are not availing of a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each Top-Level Domain Name has domain records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) reveal where the domain name is hosted, i.e. they point to the hosting company whose name servers (NSs, aka DNSs) it is using at present. You can change the NSs of your domain at any moment. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the web hosting service itself from another. Therefore, if you register your domain and stumble upon decent website hosting packages someplace else later, you can point your domain to the present provider's name servers straight away.

Domain Name Server Records (NS Records)

On the whole, as long as your domain uses a given pair of NSs, all its records will point to the same web space hosting vendor. Some web hosting distributors, though, permit you to modify given domain records, including the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an Internet Protocol address, which designates on which web hosting server your site is located, whereas the MX records display which hosting server tackles the e-mail addresses associated with your domain name. For instance, if you take on a new web designer and he creates an .ASP site that will be hosted on his private Windows web hosting server, you may want to edit just the IP address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. In this way, www.domain.com will direct to the Windows hosting server, but your e-mail address accounts or any sub-domain names such as forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your present Linux hosting account. The .ASP platform is invented by Microsoft and demands a Windows server, although a Linux web hosting server would be way more stable.

Cheap TLDs Furnished by 'Blue Grape Designs Web Host'

Only a number of web hosting suppliers permit you to edit certain domain name server records and very often this an extra paid service. With Blue Grape Designs Web Host , you get a big collection of TLDs to choose from and you can edit all name server records or forward the domain names through a forwarding tool at no extra cost. Because of that, 'Blue Grape Designs Web Host' would be your best pick when it comes to managing your domain name and to setting up a successful presence on the World Wide Web.