How vital can an affordable domain be?

One of the most vital prerequisites for having a successful online presence is the domain. It is what people will notice first when they chance upon your web site and what they will associate you with. The domain name should be easy to remember, but should also be something that informs your visitors what the website is about.

Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs)

A domain usually consists of 2 fragments - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain Name (SLD). If you have domain.com, for example, ".com" is the Top-Level Domain Name and "domain" is the SLD. There are a few groups of Top-Level Domain Names that you should consider prior to choosing the domain you desire. Your decision should be built upon the goal of your site and on its target spectators. Let's have a glimpse at the gTLDs, or generic TLDs - these are the most widespread TLDs meant to designate a particular intention - .com (business entities), .net (networks), .biz (corporations), .info (informational websites), .org (organizations of a non-commercial character), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific), .name (persons or families), .pro (given professions), and so on. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domains cover most fields of life, so you should pick the one that would denote the intention of your web page best. There is no restriction as to who can register such domains, but some of them involve extra requirements to confirm that you are eligible to register such a domain (.mobi and .pro, for instance).

Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code TLDs, are country-specific TLDs. Each country has its own ccTLD. Settling on such a domain is good if your target group of visitors is from a particular country. Many visitors would elect to buy commodities or services from a local web page, and if your goal is Canada, for instance, opting for a .ca Top-Level Domain Name could boost the visits to your web page.

Domain Forwarding

You can register several domains, which can forward your visitors to a given site such as domain.com, for instance. This would increase the traffic and reduce the likelihood of someone pinching your web site visitors by registering the same SLD with a different Top-Level Domain - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each domain name has domain name records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) disclose where the domain name is hosted, in other words they point to the hosting company whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is using at the moment. You can replace the NSs of your domain name whenever you wish. You can have your domain registered with one company and get the web page hosting service itself from another. Therefore, if you register your domain and detect good website hosting plans somewhere else afterwards, you can point your domain name to the present provider's name servers straight off.

Name Server Records (DNS Records)

In general, as long as your domain uses a certain set of DNSs, all its DNS records will lead to the same site hosting vendor. Some web space hosting firms, though, enable you to modify certain domain name server records, such as the A records and the MX records of your domain name. The A record is an IP address, which exhibits on which web server your web page is hosted, whereas the MX records show which web hosting server handles the email accounts related to your domain name. For instance, if you take on a new web designer and he develops an .ASP web site that will be located on his own Windows web server, you may wish to edit just the IP address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. So, www.domain.com will point to the Windows server, but your e-mails or any sub-domain names like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your current Linux web space hosting account. The .ASP environment is built by Microsoft and necessitates a Windows hosting server, although a Linux server would be far more reliable.

Affordably Priced TLDs Courtesy of 'Future Techniques'

Only a few web hosting companies enable you to modify specific DNS records and quite often this an additional paid service. With Future Techniques , you have an enormous array of TLDs to select from and you can edit all domain records or forward the domain names via a redirection tool at no added cost. Therefore, 'Future Techniques' would be your best pick when it comes to handling your domain name and to creating a successful presence on the web.