How essential is to find the best domain name?

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

Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs)

A domain traditionally consists of 2 constituents - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain (SLD). If you have domain.com, for instance, ".com" is the Top-Level Domain Name and "domain" is the SLD. There are a couple of categories of TLDs that you should consider prior to picking the domain you want. Your pick should be built upon the intention of your web site and on its target spectators. Let's check out the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domain Names - these are the most common Top-Level Domain Names meant to express a specific function - .com (business enterprises), .net (networks), .biz (companies), .info (informative websites), .org (organizations of a non-commercial character), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia Pacific), .name (persons or relatives), .pro (particular professions), etc. As you can see, these Top-Level Domain Names cover most fields of life, so you should select the one that would indicate the intention of your web site best. There is no restriction as to who can register such Top-Level Domain Names, but some of them contain additional procedures to verify that you are eligible to have such a 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 Top-Level Domain Names. Each country has its own ccTLD. Choosing such a TLD is good if your target group of website visitors is from a given country. Many people would sooner purchase goods or services from a local site, and if your aim is Canada, for instance, opting for a .ca Top-Level Domain Name could boost the visits to your site.

Domain Redirection

You can register a bunch of Top-Level Domains, which can redirect your visitors to a given site such as domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and lower the likelihood of someone pinching your visitors by registering the same Second-Level Domain with a different TLD - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each domain name has domain records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) specify where the domain is hosted, i.e. they point to the hosting vendor whose name servers (NSs, also known as DNSs) it is utilizing at the moment. You can replace the DNSs of your domain at any moment. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the web page hosting service itself from another. Therefore, if you register your domain and encounter good website hosting services somewhere else later, you can point your domain to the new company's NSs straight away.

Domain Name Server Records (NS Records)

On the whole, as long as your domain name uses a given set of name servers, all its domain name records will point to the same site hosting company. Some site hosting vendors, however, enable you to edit specific domain name records, such as the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an Internet Protocol address, which indicates on which web server your web page is located, while the MX records specify which hosting server handles the mailbox accounts associated with your domain name. For example, if you engage a new web designer and he devises an .ASP website that will be accommodated on his personal Windows web hosting server, you may want to alter just the IP address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. Hence, www.domain.com will point to the Windows web hosting server, but your email 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 web server, even though a Linux hosting server would be way more reliable.

Cut-Rate Top-Level Domain Names Provided by 'Exclusive Hosting'

Only a few web hosting distributors permit you to edit specific name server records and quite often this an extra paid service. With Exclusive Hosting , you get an enormous array of Top-Level Domain Names to select from and you can modify all name server records or forward the domain names via a redirection tool at no extra cost. Because of that, 'Exclusive Hosting' would be your finest choice when it comes to administering your domain and to creating a successful presence on the Internet.