Services

Domain Registration

Overview

Domains are one of the most misunderstood components of the internet. Without domain names, we would all be typing in IP addresses into our browsers to find web sites. Simply put, domains function much like cities and zip codes (in the U.S.). We could just use zip codes when we talk about where out friends live, but most of us would not understand the location we were referring to because there are so many zip codes, that they all start to sound alike. The human brain makes a more emotional connection with city names. If I said I have a great friend in 70113, you might have to look it up. If I said I have a great friend in New Orleans, you would get an image in your mind right away and understand where and how he lives. Domain names allow us to connect the same way. Most web sites actually have an IP address, like 174.121.152.74. If you type that into your browser's address bar, you will get web8080.com. You can type either the domain name or the IP address into your browser's address bar and get the same result.

Basic Rules for Domain Names
•	Domain names must begin with a letter or number
•	Letters are all lower case, no caps
•	No spaces allowed in names
•	No punctuation, except dashes "-"
•	All names have an extension (the 2 or 3 characters after the dot)
•	As of this writing, domains have a 63 character limit
•	Domains are aliases for IP addresses
•	Your never own a domain, you register (reserve) it for a fixed period of time
•	Some domain extensions are reserved for specific groups, like military, educational facilities, etc
•	Some domains extensions are reserved by companies for private use.
•	There are three reasons to register a domain: • It's the name (or a version of the name) of yourself or your organization • You are trying to protect your brand by preventing others from registering your name • To capture keywords that relate to yourself or your organization

What Name to Register?

The best approach to registration is to register your legal name or the legal name of your business first. It's always best to get the .com and .net if you can. If your name is often misspelled, then register the common misspellings as well. Although it is illegal, other businesses may attempt to register misspellings to capture potential customers who mistype or misspell your name.

If you are trying to protect your brand, the following are good rules of thumb:

•	Register the registered name of your business(es) in .com and .net
•	If you cannot get your registered name, try adding suffixes like inc, online, la or llc, whatever may apply.
•	Sometimes the names are available with other common extensions as well, like .us, .biz, .la, etc. Do watch the charges on international domains, like .tv and .la. Some providers charge up to 95.00 per year for registration of these.
•	Register any common abbreviations for your name, like acronyms (aspca.com)
•	If you have a name that is misspelled a lot like abercrombeandfitch.com, register the common misspellings.
•	Lastly, do not register domains with intent to divert or distract from another business, this is illegal.

Domain Names and Search Engines

When search engines scan through websites to render results on search engines, they also search through the domain names themselves for the keywords or search terms. A domain like joesdoors.com will not get the ranking that joes-custom-doors-windows.com will get, because you have spelled the search terms out for the search engines. They will factor in the domain name into their ranking scenario. Many companies register as many as 70 domain names to help with these rankings. As stated in the section above, always register your business name first, then consider the additional names to park to aid in ranking.

Nameservers: Connecting Your Domain to Your Site

There are two components to your website; Your domain(s) and your host. Your domain(s) point over to the host so the internet knows where to send people and the host must have knowledge of what domains to allow to be pointed. Wherever your domain is registered, there is a place in your control panel where you wet the "nameservers". These settings can be obtained from your hosting provider. The settings typically look like:

Name Server 1:	ns1.yourhost.net
Name Server 2:	ns2.yourhost.net

Then, when you set up your hosting, all you have to do is specify the domain that your pointed at the host. You can set up more than one domain to point to your site. In this case, you still need the "Primary" domain that you set up. All the other domains are known as "Parked Domains". Once you have pointed all the domains you want at your host, you can go to your hosting control panel and add them all as "Parked" and they will all work as well.

Our Solution: DOT 8080

Our sister site, dot8080.com, is a fully functional domain registry. We do not bog down the registration or renewal process with complicated policies and procedures. You can transfer domains in. Create multiple accounts and move domains across accounts freely and instantly at no charge. You can synchronize the renewal dates to any date you like (there is a charge for this), and finally, you can update information for multiple domains at the same time. For instance, if you change your address, you can select 100 domains and update them all at once!

Search and register your domain(s) now: