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Buying a Domain Name

Continuing our tutorial on owning a domain name and building a website we take a look at the domain purchase and a list of things you need to know when finding and buying a domain name for your future website.

Continuing our tutorial on owning a domain name and building a website we take a look at the actual domain purchase and a list of things you need to know when finding and buying a domain name for your future website.

Some web hosts offer you a free domain name if you host with them however we recommend you purchase your domain name through a third party accredited domain name supplier as some hosts are very reluctant to release your domain name to you if you decide to change hosts in the future. This can result in serious downtime for your website and possible loss of your domain name.

Your domain name must start and end with a letter or a number. You can not use spaces in your domain name and it can contain only Roman (English) letters, numbers or a hyphen "-". A domain name is not case sensitive however 99% of domain names use lower case.

We do not recommend using a hyphen in a domain name due to the hardship of explaining your URL (domain name) to someone, and people in some countries do not know what a hyphen is, and may refer to it as a dash, slash, or even a space. Plus the person/company that has the non-hyphenated name will receive a lot of YOUR traffic due to Internet users forgetting to type in the hyphen. You want "mydomainname.com" NOT "my-domain-name.com".

Your next step is to decide which domain name extension (TLD) you wish to use, ".com" is the most common followed by ".net", however your preferred domain extension may already be taken so you may have to settle for yourdomain.net or yourdomain.info, or try a different name search. Remember to also try a plural alternative in your domain search if the singular is taken.

IMPORTANT - You should never register or purchase a domain name without first investigating to determine if the desired domain name is identical or similar to an existing trademark. If you acquire a domain name that infringes on another person's trademark or service mark, you could be sued for trademark infringement and lose the domain name. Here are a couple of basic checks you can perform to ensure you are not infringing on intellectual property rights.

Do a search on Google to determine if the domain name you wish to register is being used as a business trade name or the name of any goods or services.

Do a search at Whois.sc to see if there are any company domain names that are virtually identical or similar to your desired domain name.

IMPORTANT - One thing to consider before buying a domain name is think what your website is about, if its a personal for fun website or blog the following doesn't really matter, but if your website is a local business and maybe an extension to your real life shop front you should consider a more local domain name extension. eg ".com.au" for Australian businesses, ".com.us" for the USA, ".fr" for France, ".jp" for Japan, ".co.uk and ".uk.com" for United Kingdom etc. This will often give far better results in the search engines when local people search for example "Real Estate London" and your website has a .co.uk extension. It helps if your .co.uk domain is also physically hosted in the UK, more about that in our hosting choice section. Here is a list of domain extensions or TLD's listed by country.

Although most of the good domain names are already in use if possible try and include your main keyword(s) in your domain name, eg. if your website focuses on selling second hand cars in London then try and look for a domain like "londonsecondhandcars.co.uk" or "usedcarslondon.co.uk". Domain names can be up to 67 characters long, however a name that long would be virtually impossible for web surfers remember.

A quick domain name search tool I use that shows whether the domain name is available as you type it can be found at DomainBot which also shows whether the domain is available as you type. I use DomainBot first to see if a domain is currently available and then head over to the accredited domain name registrar I prefer, which is Enom.com they have won many awards and are a long term and stable online company.

By becoming a free member of Enom you can both purchase your domain name(s) and manage the DNS settings all from the one easy location, ".com" domain names at Enom cost under $9 per year to register. You can have unlimited domains you own in your single account.

So lets get started by finding and buying a domain name!

See if your preferred domain name is available by entering it a domain name search box such as DomainsBot.com - DO NOT enter the www prefix - for example enter "example" NOT "www.example".

When you have found the name you wish to use then simply create a free account at Enom.com or a domain name registrar of your choice.

Once you have purchased your domain name one of the options you will see refers to DNS settings, for the present time leave this set as it is. The DNS settings will need to be changed once you complete the next step - Finding a web host.

Important: When you purchase your domain name be sure to enter all the domain contact details correctly as this is a strict requirement of owning a domain.

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