If you are going to create a website, apart from actually creating the site and finding a hosting solution for it, there is another step that is necessary for your website to start – registering a Domain Name for it.
What is a domain name?
A domain name is basically the name of your site which is specified in the address line. To acquire one, you have to register it at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has been responsible for filing domain names since 1998, via a third-party organization that takes over the actual process of registration. You pay for it, and rent it for a certain period of time – often a year – upon expiring of which you can renew it or give it up, so someone else will be able to place their own website instead of your old one.
Why is the domain name important?
The domain name determines in many ways, how people perceive your website. If it’s easy to recognize and remember and reflects that is to say the essence of your brand, it will affect positively people’s willingness to visit your website. Instead, if you have a messy domain name, like the ones often provided by free hostings, this will not only look ugly but also cause suspicion with a lot of customers.
All in all, for rather obvious reasons, a domain name is a responsible matter and is not something you should save money on.
How to register a domain name?
The most common and intuitive option for registering a domain name is to do it with the help of a hosting provider. Pretty much logical – they provide you with the hosting and for additional payment, they register your domain name. However, this relationship is not mandatory, and you can host a website and register a domain name via different providers.
Different providers of domain name registration offer different conditions, so let’s see, what you have to keep in mind when looking for the right service provider.
Price
Except that the price has, of course, to satisfy you as such, so you are likely to search for the provider with a plan that you find affordable, you also have to make sure to check the pricing policy of this or that service provider, because the way you are charged may vary as well. Some providers offer a fixed price both for the first domain registration and for each renewal. Another cunning provider may offer one cheap price for the registration but increase it drastically for the renewal. Make sure that you know what the pricing policy of the provider in question is, reading carefully the service level agreements and asking them direct questions.
Technical support
Registering a domain name is not the end of the journey. Instead, issues may happen all the time, you’d better check what the customer service of this or that provider looks like in order to fix any arising problems as promptly as possible.
Hosting services
In case you are going to register the domain name and host your website at the same provider, you’ve got to check the quality of hosting services provided by them. Check, which services they offer, their pricing plans, the quality of data centers, the quality of hardware, the variety of locations, the rescaling options as well as the availability of both virtual private servers and dedicated servers, and other options. The choice of hosting provider is not a matter of a single paragraph in a small article, but this is to say the checklist of main points that are to be kept in mind when opting for a hosting solution.
The speed of updates
Another important point is the speed of updates provided. This does not affect the quality of the service directly, but whenever you wish to change the location of your domain registration or of the website hosting, it’s good when this process is performed promptly without long delays, so you can always remain flexible.
How does domain registration occur?
After you have clarified all the points discussed above, domain registration occurs in a rather straightforward way. You have to choose your domain and check whether it’s available. Fill out the information that your service provider requires. After everything is done and the services are paid for, the service provider will take care of ICANN, upon which you can start using your domain name. Only in case, you went to different companies for domain registration and for hosting, you should update the name servers of your domain by pasting the nameservers from the hosting company to the domain name settings.
Changing the domain registration provider
If you want and need it, you can also change the company responsible for your domain registration. For this, you’ll have to follow a similar procedure.
Conclusion
Though registering a domain name isn’t as complex a task as looking for a hosting solution, there are still some points to take into consideration and we hope, that this article has clarified them for you. If you haven’t made up your mind yet, but want to save time and effort on searching for both hosting and domain registration provider, we advise you to check out virtual server hosting Canada by HostZealot, which is a good offer by an excellent provider. Take care!