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Domains
Part of “Going Self-Hosted with Wordpress: A Wolfie Guide” [PDF]
In the first installment of this Guide, I covered getting yourself some hosting for your very own website, but I didn’t really go into depth about domains; since then I’ve had a couple of requests to cover that subject a bit more fully and now seemed like the right time.
What is a domain?
Simply put, it’s an Internet address, like wolfshowl.com. It’s a unique name that identifies a website on the Net. It can be a “friendly” address (words that you can understand) just a group of numbers, like 192.168.0.1.
You may also hear terms like “top-level” and “second-level” when referring to domains; this refers to the extension at the end of the address. For example, wolfshowl.com is a top-level domain, whereas wolfshowl.co.uk would be a second-level domain. As far as I can see, there is no practical difference, except for the snob value of having a top level-domain.
How do I choose a domain?
This can be trickier - all of the good ones are gone! Basically, decide first what domain extension you want; would you prefer the one specifically for your country (so for the UK you’d be looking at .co.uk), do you want a .com, or do you want one of the more academic ones like .org or .info?
Then think about what you want after the www; if you run a company, you’ll probably want to have the company name or perhaps your best-selling product. For bloggers, you might want your name or the name of your blog. Any and all of these are valid options, but remember that you may not be able to have your first choice because someone will have got there first. You have no rights whatsoever to your name as far as domain names are concerned; it’s first come, first served.
Finally, go to who.is and enter what you’d like in the search box. The results page will tell you whether it’s available, who owns it if it’s not and what related domains may still be available.
I’ve decided what I want. How do I buy it?
Here you have loads of choice. There are sites all over the web at which you can register a domain. If you just want to register the name but don’t want any hosting at the moment, do a Google search for “domain registration” and see what comes up; the maximum I would pay would be £8.50 (about $17), which should get you a .com for a year or a .co.uk for two years. There are many sites out there with headline prices much lower than this; just make sure you read the small print.
If you want hosting as well, then I suggest you register your domain name when you sign up for your hosting package. That way, all the paperwork is taken care of in one go. The two companies I mentioned in the previous article (A Small Orange and Hosting-Unlimited) will both do this for you.
Make sure that, whoever registers it for you, it gets registered in your name not theirs. I’ve heard that some of the companies offering rock-bottom registration prices don’t register them in your name but in theirs. That way, it becomes difficult for you to do anything with the name because it is more difficult for you to prove ownership.
Now I’ve got it, what next?
Well, now you need to set up your site. Use the information in the previous articles if you need help on this.
Wordpress.com offer domain mapping. What’s that?
This paid add-on to the free Wordpress.com blogging service lets you buy a domain name and then have it re-direct to your free-hosted blog. That way, you look like you’re self-hosted but you’re not and you remain bound by the Wordpress.com Terms of Service.
The problem with the domain mapping add-on is that it goes the wrong way. Most people will have started with a free-hosted blog and will be looking to move to self-hosted, and so would want to point their free-hosted blog to their brand new site. That way the traffic and readership they’ve worked so hard to build up on the free-hosted site would be re-directed to the self-hosted site, helping it to establish itself and build up traffic, Alexa Rank, Real Rank and Google Page Rank quickly rather than having to start from scratch.
Comments
2 Responses to “Domains”
I think you know what to do....
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As always, useful information for those of us who are contemplating the jump.
I look forward to the next instalment. Thanks.
I’ll second what Gareth has said. And, I’ve also updated my previous post to include this title.