What Are Domain Names and Where Do You Get Them?

June 21, 2009 by Butterfly Filed under: Domain

A domain name is really an alias for an internet IP address. Every website has an IP address that tells a web browser where to access the content from. An example of an IP address might be 22.255.155.14. It is much easier to type in domain names in your browser, rather than a bunch of numbers. A domain name is much easier for your customers to remember than numbers as well.

If you want to purchase a domain name, you can purchase them through a domain name registrar. This is a company that is registered through ICANN which has the ability to allow you to purchase domain names. You might already know this, but only one person can own a certain domain name. You can purchase as many domain names as you want, but they must all be unique. You can of course purchase a domain that is similar to another domain with a different extension. The most common extension of course is .com but those are getting harder to find by the day.

You can also purchase a domain name through a web hosting provider when you are purchasing a hosting package for your site. This might save you time and even money. Some web hosting providers offer you a free domain name when you purchase services with them. Be sure to make sure that the domain name you want is available first if you have someone else register it for you. This will save time rather than the hosting company emailing or calling you to let you know that the domain is already taken. You can find out if a domain name is already taken by going to a domain name registrar and doing a whois on the domain.

If you choose to purchase a domain name through a registrar, you are going to need to update your account to tell the registrar which IP address to point your domain name to. Your website hosting company will be able to provide this information to you. If your hosting company registers the domain for you, they will do this step.

If you are going to purchase multiple domain names, the best suggestion would be to register them all with the same domain name registrar. Doing this makes it easy to access all your domains at the same place. You might even be able to save money when you renew your domains if you are renewing multiple domains at the same time.