Archive for Domains and Web hosting

Tips on choosing Your domain name.

May 11, 2009 Webmasters-central.com Domains and Web hosting

Your domain name comes long way with you and your online success. So follow these tips to make yourself comfortable with domain name selection.

1. Make it simple and easily memorable:

Your domain name can contain up to 63 characters. But confine yourself with a maximum of 15 characters. Long names are difficult to remember and type. Longer the name more will be the chances to type it wrong in the browser.

2. Should reflect your business or product:

Suppose your product name is ‘hotproduct’. Then you can keep different domain names like

hotproduct-online.com
hotproduct2you.com
hotproduct.com
OR
Anything you like…

With this type of names anybody can guess what your product will be before they come to your site. Some real sites that comes under this category are:

searchenginewatch.com
htmlgoodies.com

3. If possible always stick on to ‘.com’ extention:

‘yoursite.com’ is always better than ‘yoursite.net’ or ‘yoursite.org’.

‘.com’ is preferred unless there is a specific reason like it is your personal blog or non-profit organizations:

* Most people inclined to type ‘.com’ than any other existing TLDs.
* Easy to remember.
* Even in email addresses you will come accross more ‘.com’s than other TLDs.

4. Avoid few words in your domain names:

Try to avoid the following words:

and
is
for
the
at
with

These words tend to clutter the domain name. Instead you can make them short with a hyphen(-).

Instead of ‘successisyours.com’, you can keep ‘your-success.com’.

5. Let your domain name reflects your brand:

If you already own a physical company with a particular name that sell your product, then you can name your domain after it.

If you publish books and your company name is ‘smith publications’, then it would enhance your credibility if you keep your domain name like ‘smithpublications.com’.

Some big companies that named their websites after their products:

dell.com
IBM.com

6. Instant generation of traffic:

Most people will type the keyword in their browsers and put a ‘.com’ to it and press ENTER. Because of this nature of the internet users, almost all the single words in the dictionary are registered long back.

7. Try to keep hyphen(-) for clarity:

See the name of this website. ‘webmasters-central’ is easy to read than ‘webmasterscentral’.By keeping these hyphens also gives more domain names with the same words.

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Domain name basics.

May 11, 2009 Webmasters-central.com Domains and Web hosting

Domain name is like your office name on the internet. It is your online identity. You have full rights on your domain name once it was registered under your name with that particular TLD.(See below)

Structure of domain name

Each domain name has two parts seperated by a dot. First part contains the name you have choosen for your website.Second part contains the ‘domain extention’ which is shared by others too.

yoursite.com

In the above domain name, ‘yoursite’ is the first part that is specific to your website. ‘.com’ is the extention of the domain. This ‘.com’ is called as ‘TLD’(Top Level Domain)

What is TLD?

TLD’s are the top level in the hierarchy of the domain name system. There are three types of TLD’s.

  • gTLD: (Generic TLDs)

These are ‘generic TLD’s.This means, these extentions are open to general public.
Examples are .com, .net, .org, .info
.com: Commercial sites
.net: Network businesses
.org: Organisations
.info: Informational sites
.edu: Educational Institutions
.gov: Governments and their agencies
.name: Personal web sites
.biz: Business use

  • ccTLD: (Country Code TLDs)

TLDs with country codes.Specific to websites particularly dedicated to that country.
Examples are .us, .ca, .uk, .jp etc
.us: United States
.ca: Canada
.uk: United Kingdom
.jp: Japan

Where to register? How much it costs?

Once you have decided your domain name, you should better register it asap so you don’t lose the name.

This registration process, policies, charges are different for different TLDs. For examples ‘.com’ sites can be registered for $8 to $35 per year. Here are few registrars who register your domain name for $8.00 – 10.00.
 
http://www.godaddy.com/ :$8.97 per year
http://www.namecheap.com/ : $9.69 per year
http://www.enom.com/ : $9.99 per year

(Check them before you use these services. Webmasters-central.com is no way related to these services.)

You can register your domain name for as many years as you want. If you register in bulk, the charge will be little less when compared to registering for one year.

What can I do with my domain?

1. You can build a website with your products and services. For most of the people this is the goal for registering a domain name.

2. You can sell your domain if you no longer need it. Or you can do this registering and selling process as a business. Some people register domain names in bulk and sell them later with profit.

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Subdomains, Add on domains and Folders? What is the difference?

May 7, 2009 Webmasters-central.com Domains and Web hosting

I have come across this question so many times in many forums. Web designers and webmasters constantly posting this question especially what is their importance in search engines point of view.

Subdomains:

Subdomains are like seperate rooms in a house. They are individual areas in a house. They have their own doors, wndows, roof etc. Same way subdomains are a seperate folder (though it appears as a regular folder) and has it’s own cgi-bin. They can be accessible like :

http://subdomain.domain.com/

Your host has to enable this feature for you to create subdomains under your main website.

Disadvantages of subdomains:
* They are taken as seperate web sites by search engines. So you need to optimize and promote them as regular web site. If that subdomain is your supportdesk or order taking site, that is OK. You don’t need to promote your helpdesk. But if it is a content site, you need seperate tags and site submissions.
http://articles.domain.com/ (You need to promote this)
http://helpdesk.domain.com/ (No need to promote your helpdesk n search engines)

Advantages:
* If you have seperate category of unrelated products, you can use subdomain feature instead of expensive multi-domain host.

http://ebay.books.com/

http://amazon.books.com/

Sub-Folders:

Folders on other hand like small cubicles in a room. Same roof with same windows and doors … You can create content on your web site in to folders. All hosts allow folder creation. Your folder can be accessible like: http://www.site.com/folder/

Disadvantages:
*You can not maintain different categories like subdomains.

Advantages:
* Simple to maintain.
* Even your folder gets a backlink from another site, it is useful for your whole page rank. (hearsay!)
* You don’t have to pay anything extra to your host like subdomain feature.

Personally I prefer to go with folders instead of subdomains!

Add-on domains:

Add on domains are like adding second floor over first floor. You can add new domains under one main domain. Sometimes on same ip address. You will get one host panel to manage all these add on domains.

Multi domain host allows add-on domain feature for you to add domains under your main domain.

Disadvantages:
* Add-on domains are hosted on same ip. So it is not possible to get dedicated ip for your add on domains. You need to get a seperate host panel for your add-on domain and get dedicated ip.

Advantages:
* Cost effective.
* Easy to manage all of your domains in one place.

Personally I prefer subfolders than subdomains, as maintaining a single site is easy in terms of  links and promotion.

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