Choose a Dog Name… Domain
How to Create A Website: Fast and Easy Guide Part 1
This is the first part of the “How to Create A Website” guide. Imagine you are given a dog, how would you call it? Just “dog”? You would definitely try to come up a wonderful name for her – not the common ones. Soon, your dog will realize her name and come to you immediately once you call her name.
It is the same with websites. The first step to creating your website is to choose a name for the website. It might be your name, your company name or any interesting or fancy name you can think of. Wait for a while, try to understand what are the rules for website domain names first.
The Anatomy of a Website Name
You just need to know www is the most common
This part offers you the most freedom, you can make up a name whatever you like here as long as you use only English alphabets (uppercase or lowercase letters make no difference), numbers and hyphens (-)
There are a number of pre-defined to choose from, the most common ones are .com, .org, .biz, .net
If you want to know the official names for the different parts of the domain name. Part 1 is called the sub-domain, part 2 is the domain, part 3 is the top level domain. For the top level domain, there are some choices like .edu and .gov with restricted use. For most others, .com and .net are the most suitable ones.
Domain Names Examples
Tips on Choosing the Right Domain Name
It is most advised to use your own name, your company or organization name or your product name as the domain name if available. You can also refer to the tips below to choose a killer domain name. The case of the letters does not matter, e.g. typingYaHoo.com and YAhoo.COM in the address bar of a browser will both lead you to yahoo.com (by default the lowercase domain name will be displayed).
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Short, Simple and Memorizable
- so that visitors will remember your domain in their mind and there is a higher chance the interested parties will type your domain name correctly
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Pronounceable
- so that you can tell others about the domain name instead of having to spell letter by letter, e.g. “E” Bay
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Distinct
- so that visitors will not mix your domain up with other websites
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Reasonable cost
- a domain normally costs $10 per year, but as a domains are taken on a first-come-first-served basis, if the domain you love is held by others, you need to buy it from the owner for US$1000 upwards. It is recommended to choose a domain not registered by others.
- as an example, if you would like to create a website to teach how to create a website, you can use howtocreatewebsite.com, createwebsite.com, websitecreate.com, websiteguide.com, etc. Just choose the one which has not been registered to save you money.
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Avoid Hyphens ‘-‘ and numbers
- though you can use hyphen and numbers in your domain name, typing these on mobile devices are quite troublesome. If it is feasible, stay with an alphabet only domain name.
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Don’t infringe on other’s copyright, or you will be sued
- This is very important! Make sure your domain name does not contain copyrighted words such as “WordPress”, “PMP”, “ITIL”, or the brand name of famous companies such as “LV”,”Nike”,”Bluehost”. That’s exactly why you will see domain names using “WP” (just as in our case) instead of “WordPress”. Companies nowadays are very pro-active in securing their interest and many website using these words have been sued to out of business.
Cost of a Domain
A domain name normally cost around US$10 or above, depending on which company you register the name with and the type of domain (e.g. .org is generally more expensive than .com). There are web host plans that include the cost of the domain name and save you the hassles of technical configurations, read on for more details.
Where to Get?
A domain must be registered through a authorized domain registrar (a company specialized in registering domains). You are highly advised to register your domain with the hosting company. Go to Step 2 of “How to Create A Website” guide to know how.
Act fast! Domain names are given out first-come-first-served. Once you have identified your favorite domain name, don’t wait. Others might get it ahead of you. Go to Step 2 of “How to Create A Website” guide to understand how to register your domain now.
Well Done! Go to the Next Step:
You have completed Step 1 of the “How to Create A Website” guide, click above to go to the second step of creating a website: choose a website host
How to Create A Website: Fast and Easy Guide is created by Edward Chung, PMP, a graphic designer turned full-stack web developer and project manager. Edward learnt how to create a website the hard way, spending hundreds of hours in learning programming languages before rolling out his first design portfolio website. Edward understands the pains and thus wrote this Fast and Easy Guide to help fellow wannabe website owners to create a website in an hour’s time.
If you find this website helpful, please consider adding Edward to your Google+ circle and following me on Twitter@edwardchungweb.
