How crucial can an affordable domain be?

One of the most crucial prerequisites for establishing a successful web presence is the domain name. It is what people will discern first when they stumble upon your site and what they will link you with. The domain name should be easy to remember, but should also be something that tells your web page's visitors what the web site is about.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

A domain name traditionally is composed of 2 components - a Top-Level Domain (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain (SLD). If you have domain.com, for instance, ".com" is the Top-Level Domain Name and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain Name. There are a couple of groups of Top-Level Domains that you should consider prior to choosing the domain you want. Your decision should rest on the intention of your website and on its target viewers. Let's analyze the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domain Names - these are the most typical Top-Level Domain Names intended to show a specific purpose - .com (business organizations), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (corporations), .info (informative sites), .org (organizations), .mobi (mobile devices), .asia (the Asia Pacific), .name (persons or relatives), .pro (particular walks of life), etc. As you can see, these TLDs cover most spheres of life, so you should choose the one that would portray the aim of your website best. There is no restriction as to who can register such TLDs, but some of them contain extra requirements to confirm that you qualify to own such a domain name (.mobi and .pro, for instance).

Country-code Top-Level Domain Names (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code TLDs, are country-specific TLDs. Each country has its own ccTLD. Choosing such a Top-Level Domain is good if your target group of visitors is from a specific country. Many guys would like to buy commodities or services from a local site, and if your goal is Canada, for example, getting a .ca TLD could boost the visits to your web page.

Domain Forwarding

You can register a number of Top-Level Domain Names, which can forward your visitors to a particular web site such as domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and lower the possibility of somebody pinching your web page visitors by using the same Second-Level Domain with a different Top-Level Domain - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Every Top-Level Domain Name has domain records. The name server records (NS records, aka DNS records) indicate where the domain is hosted, i.e. they point to the web hosting company whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is using at present. You can alter the NSs of your domain name at any time. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the web space hosting service itself from another. Therefore, if you register your domain name and discover good website hosting packages someplace else later, you can point your domain to the current company's DNSs at once.

Domain Name Server Records (DNS Records)

In general, as long as your domain name uses a specific pair of DNSs, all its name server records will direct to the same web hosting provider. Some hosting vendors, though, permit you to edit given domain name records, including the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an IP address, which details on which server your website is situated, whereas the MX records exhibit which web server handles the email addresses related to your domain name. For instance, if you hire a new web designer and he devises an .ASP web page that will be located on his own Windows 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 email accounts or any sub-domain names like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your current Linux web page hosting account. The .ASP environment is created by Microsoft and requires a Windows web hosting server, although a Linux hosting server would be way more secure.

Cheap Domains Offered by 'Exclusive Hosting'

Just a small number of web hosting vendors enable you to modify particular name server records and quite frequently this an additional paid service. With Exclusive Hosting , you get an immense variety of Top-Level Domains to choose from and you can edit all NS records or forward the domains using a forwarding tool at no additional cost. Therefore, 'Exclusive Hosting' would be your best pick when it comes to managing your domain and to setting up a successful presence on the Internet.