DOMAIN REGISTRATION
A website domain is the name you type into your browser to get to a particular website. Domains take the form “www.example.com”. A domain is made up of three parts:
www.
The www is generally optional, in that entering only “example.com” will still get you to the same page as if you had added the “www.”
example
This, along with the final part are your host name. This middle part can be made up of a combination of letters, numbers and hyphens (-). There are a few restrictions: you can’t start or end a name with a hyphen, because that would look silly. Your name also has to include at least one letter, it can’t be all numbers. The domain can be up to 63 characters long, and is case-insensitive, which means that there’s no difference between EXAMPLE.com and example.com.
.com
This is one of many domain extensions — or “top-level domains” — which you can choose. You could also have a domain like “example.org” or “example.net” or countless other variations. Each one has a specific meaning which we will explain below.
Possible Domain Extensions
As already discussed, there are the three big domain extensions, .com .net and .org that are seen all over the internet.
Dot com domains are the most popular form — they denote any “commercial” website, but in actuality are used for almost every type of site because “dot com” is thought of as being synonymous for the web.
Dot net domains were originally for infrastructure-related site like ISPs, but again are used for more than that nowadays. Many companies will register both a .com and a .net version of their site.
Dot org domains are ostensibly only to be used by non-profit organizations. Anyone can register one, but if you are not running a non-profit organization, you should not register a dot org.
There are a few other unsponsored domains and they are .edu for universities and schools, .int for international organizations, .gov for the government, and .mil for the military.
Beyond the big three, there are dozens of other extensions you can register in. Most of these are country-specific extensions. Almost every country will have their own extension. For example, Costa Rica uses .co.cr Britain uses .co.uk, Germany uses .de and Ireland uses .ie. If your site caters specifically for people from a certain country, you should definitely get a country-specific domain name. Optionally, you can also register the .com version as well, and redirect all traffic from it to this country-specific one.
Many search engines also have country-specific versions, and they will weight local sites more heavily than others. So, in a search on the Spanish version of Google, a site with a .es extension will rank higher than the competition because their domain is more specific.
In November 2000, seven extra extensions were made available for various purposes, .aero for aeroplane, .biz for businesses, .coop for cooperatives, .info for informative websites, .museum for museums, .name for individuals' real names, and .pro for professional with valid credentials..
In June 2005 six new extensions were approved and .xxx was revoked. These were .cat for the Catalan language, .jobs for employment-related sites, .mobi for mobile devices, .post for national and regional postal services, .tel for telecommunication services, and .travel for businesses in the travel industry.
Subdomains
Once you have your main domain name, you can have as many subdomains beneath it as you like. The subdomain takes the place of the “www” — so we could have “secure.example.com”, or “archives.example.net”. Setting up subdomains can be a useful way to keep a site organized, or to use multiple servers for a single site so that heavy traffic does not overwhelm your single server.
Register with us
We can register all of the common domain names and most of the country specific names. Domains ending in .com, .net, or .org cost $15 per year. Country-specific domains will cost a little more. Some might involve a screening process, wherein you have to produce some documentation to prove your business is actually being run from the country.
Nameservers
Once you have registered a domain, you will need to point it towards our name servers. We will do this for you if we register the name for you, but what it basically involves is updating your domain by adding two or more nameservers to it. These nameservers are servers that manage which addresses point to your sites. You add at least two nameservers so that the second nameserver can be used as a backup. Our nameservers are NS1.CENTRALAMERICAHOSTING.COM 196.40.46.13 and NS2.CENTRALAMERICAHOSTING.COM 196.40.46.14
Once this information has been updated, you will have to wait about 24 hours for the nameserver information to spread, or propagate, throughout the internet. In this time you can begin uploading your site. Once it has updated, anyone in the world will be able to type in your domain name and get to your site!
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