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ONLINE
MONTANA DOMAIN NAMES FOR A BETTER URL |
- The Easy Way?
Check to see if the name you want is
free
http://whois.com/
Then ask your ISP to fix it for you.
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- Domain
names say that you are serious, a force
to be reckoned with, in this for real.
- And if you
change your ISP you do not have to
change your letterhead, you can take
your domain name with you, and no one
will notice the change.
- Domain
names are even an ego trip....
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- Step One: E/Mail
Addresses go with Domain Names
-
 Domain
names can also incorporate your E/Mail
address if you wish. E/Mail addresses are
usually quite acceptable and there is no
special reason for going to a domain name
just for a better E/Mail address, but a lot
of ISPs suggest that you do this.
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If
you have different ISPs for your website and
your E/Mail, then you can have any mail
going to your website forwarded usually at
no extra charge. For example I could have
fred@fred.co.uk forewarded to Fred@compuserve.com
where I can read it all in one lump as often
as I wish.
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The
ISP may let you have several mailboxes so
that members of your family or office can
each have their own private mailbox. Or more
often, they give you just the one POP3
mailbox and you can choose your own names
like Sales, Info, Richard or whatever, and
any messages end up in the same place.
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- Step two:
Why are you not happy with the standard
offering.
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Ask
your ISP to tell you exactly what the normal
name of your site will be. You know the
answer for Compuserve, which is jaw-breaker
to say the least: ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Yourname
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It
is, possibly, long and ugly on purpose, to
persuade you to give up and take the proper
business options and pay more money. No one
has much credibility with a site name like
that. The Search Engines think they are just
vanity pages; they will not come looking for
you, you have to kick them.
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If
you want a more civilized name you cannot do
it on Ourworld. You have to look elsewhere.
What you can do is pay a small sum of money
per year to an organization who will give
you a neater URL and E/Mail address, and
forward web accesses and messages to your
other site. This has all the advantages of a
domain name at less cost. There are even
sites that will do it free in return for
advertising on your site.
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Or
you can move to another ISP that does offer
a better style of name. But take care. You
have to ask exactly what your new name will
look like. Or compromise and stay on
Compuserve for the forums and messaging, and
sign up with another ISP to host your
website. Each ISP has its own conventions
for a standard address, some of which are
quite civilized.
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- Step
three: Choose a name for yourself.
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The
key point is that you must choose a name
that people will remember if you tell them
in a hurry at the bus stop. Like
www.mywebsite.com
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When
quoting on your letterhead it is a good idea
always to show the www. It is not now
necessary to prefix this with http:// as
everyone with a browser will know that bit.
For the suffix you can have:
.com which gives a good international image
.org for non profit
.net for ISPs
.ac for academics
.gov for government.
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As
from mid-2001 you can have
.info - will be for general use
.biz - will be for businesses
.name - will be for individuals
.pro - will be for professionals
.museum - will be for museums
.coop - for co-operatives
.aero - for aviation
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For
the name you can have a - (hyphen) or a _
(underscore). This means you can have, say
FlexibleSpace, Flexible-Space, or
Flexible_Space. What you choose is up to
you. I would choose the first which is what
we went with in this case.
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- Step four: Check
that your desired name is free
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Check
your desired name at one of these sources:
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http://whois.com
- to check existing owners. If you want to
register the name yourself, and remember it
is much easier to have your ISP do it for
you, then try these:
http://www.netnames.com - to
locate domain .com names
http://www.allwhois.com - said to
be the best check
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- Step
five: See your ISP and ask for what you
want.
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It
is possible to go to the registration
authority in your particular country and
register your domain name. But then you
still have to find an ISP to host your
website, and that ISP will want a fee for
taking on board your new domain name and
then hosting it each year. Most ISPs offer
discounts for the whole deal including
registration.
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The
ISP has to certify, that you are
really in business. It helps if you apply
with your letterhead, and show your VAT
number. The ISP checks that the name is free
and then applies to the country registration
body by filling in a raft of boring forms.
The ISP gets a fee, and then the ISP charges
a fee for hosting. The fees charged
vary alarmingly. There may be some special
deals. Some ISP's will include a domain name
in their standard business package. They say
it takes three days to register, in my
experience it takes three weeks because
someone along the line always makes some
mistakes.
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The
ISP may offer a domain name forwarding for
Email Example: info@yourdomain.com, and keep
the standard offering name for the website.
This costs a lower fee per year, plus
usually the costs he incurs in registering
the domain name for you. This approach does
protect the domain name in case you want to
use it later for the website.
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Or
they may offer a Virtual Server, which is
what you want. This means that your domain
name www.yourdomain.com is used for Email
addressing AND for the website. I think this
is what you need if you are serious, but
some ISPs charge a very substantial premium
for doing this plus a set-up charge. If they
want to do this I would try elsewhere. You
do have to ask. Sometimes it is not very
clear from the advertising.
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The
domain name is yours. You paid for it. You
can take it with you elsewhere whenever you
wish. Behind the domain name is a dotted
quad IP address like 194.73.150.1 which is
assigned to you by your current host. Some
people use this IP Address as their URL. I
have never understood why.
- The domain name will
be listed on the ISP's Domain Name Server
(DNS) and must also be listed on a second
DNS somewhere else. The DNS references are
in a hierarchy tree, starting with .com or
.net and working back up the sub-portions of
the URL.
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Once
you have a domain name, then you need not
have your site located at the place where it
is registered, though it is certainly most
usual to do so. For example Compuserve and
AOL will not handle domain names but give
you webspace. There are companies who will
provide you with a forwarding service for a
small fee, its sole function being to
re-address any accesses to your webspace
elsewhere.
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- Web-Forwarding
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Most
companies that register your domain name for
you can forward the Email to wherever you
specify, and also forward web file requests.
The file requests can be actioned in two
ways,
- 1) by setting up a
frame in which case the same URL will appear
on the top of each page of your site which
is displayed, rotten for bookmarks,
concealing the fact that you are on a comic
ISP with a 90-character real URL, or
- 2) just forward all
requests to the specified page on your site
and letting them see a different URL on the
top of the page to the one they asked for.
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Some
ISPs cannot or will not forward to any page
you choose, only the default page. This may
be a ploy to get you to buy web space from
them.
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By
the way, Search engines may dislike any form
of forwarding in this way, and you might be
best to submit the real URL of the page you
want the search engines to see. Even the
people who offer forwarding with a Frame,
seldom get the META tags right.
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- Step six:
Publicize your smart new URL
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It
is no use having a beautiful website with an
attractive name if you do not tell people
about it. Please go to the
Web Site Promoting
page for some thoughts on this.
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Copyright ©
2006
Online Montana
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