Domains Explained

One of the most vital prerequisites for setting up a successful online presence is the domain. It is what visitors will see first when they chance upon your web site and what they will identify you with. The domain should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that informs your web site's visitors what the website is about.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

A domain traditionally has 2 components - 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 and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain Name. There are a couple of groups of Top-Level Domains that you should contemplate prior to selecting the domain you wish. Your decision should depend on the purpose of your site and on its target visitors. Let's take a glance at the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domain Names - these are the most typical Top-Level Domain Names aimed to designate a specific purpose - .com (commercial establishments), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (companies), .info (informational websites), .org (non-profit organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific), .name (individuals or relatives), .pro (certain professions), etc. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domain Names cover most fields of life, so you should pick the one that would denote the aim of your web site best. There is no limitation as to who can register such domains, but some of them contain additional steps to prove that you are eligible to register such a Top-Level Domain (.mobi and .pro, for example).

Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code Top-Level Domain Names, are country-specific TLDs. Each country has its own ccTLD. Getting such a domain is good if your target group of web page visitors is from a given country. Many individuals would elect to purchase goods or services from a local web page, and if your aim is Canada, for example, opting for a .ca domain could boost the visits to your site.

Domain Forwarding

You can register a bunch of Top-Level Domains, which can send your visitors to a given web page such as domain.com, for example. This would boost the traffic and reduce the risk of someone swiping your web page visitors by registering the same Second-Level Domain with another Top-Level Domain Name - if you are not utilizing a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each and every TLD has domain records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) display where the domain is hosted, i.e. they point to the web hosting supplier whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is using now. You can substitute the NSs of your domain whenever you want. You can have your domain name registered with one company and get the hosting service itself from another. Thus, if you register your domain name and detect good website hosting solutions someplace else afterwards, you can point your domain to the present provider's NSs at once.

Domain Server Records (DNS Records)

In general, as long as your domain uses a given pair of NSs, all its NS records will point to the same web hosting supplier. Some hosting providers, however, allow you to modify given records, among them the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an IP address, which displays on which web server your site is located, whereas the MX records disclose which server handles the mail aliases related to your domain name. For instance, if you take on a new site designer and he build an .ASP site that will be accommodated on his private Windows web hosting server, you may desire to modify solely the Internet Protocol address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain name. So, www.domain.com will direct to the Windows hosting server, but your mailbox accounts or any sub-domain names like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your current Linux website hosting account. The .ASP environment is devised by Microsoft and requests a Windows web hosting server, even though a Linux web server would be far more stable.

Cheap TLDs Brought by 'Host Creativ'

Just a number of web hosting vendors allow you to edit certain domain name records and very frequently this an additional paid service. With us, you get an immense collection of TLDs to pick from and you can edit all domain records or forward the domains using a forwarding tool at no extra cost.