What is a domain name?
A great analogy I read gives a great explanation of domain names and its relationship with your web hosting. I'm going to quote it here:
Your domain is like your street address. When someone wants to visit your house, they pop your address into Google Maps, follow the directions, and arrive at your doorstep. Your home, on the other hand, is like your hosting provider. It is where your store all of your things: your books, your clothes, your photo albums. If your mayor one day knocked on your door and said, “We’re changing your street name from Main Street to Broadway,” your house would remain the same, but your address would change (Credit: Erica @ Wordpress.com )
Its important to get the right domain name and its part of your brand and help customers identify you and find your product. See my tips on creating the perfect domain name.
Where to get them?
The hosting provider is where you store you website's files like its text, photos, video etc and doesn't need to be from the same provider as your domain name. Though you can opt to do this as some web hosting providers are domain registrars and provide cheap domain names. The option is up to you, but its best to shop around to get the best price or go with the convenience of getting both from the same provider.I personally buy my domain names and my client's domain names separately as you can change hosting providers for a variety of reasons and you don't have to go through the hassle of transferring your domain to a new providers or lose your email (I should probably elaborate on this in a future post).
Domains need to be renewed yearly to maintain your ownership, and it is very important to make sure your domain never expires;as long as you’d like to keep using that address.
You can get domain names from these providers:
Whois Protection?
Providers usually provide a service called Whois protection which essentials masks you personal contact information which you are required to submit when buying/registering a domain name. This prevent persons looking up your domain name ownership from seeing your personal data. This service ofcourse incurs a small additional fee and varies depending on the provider. I highly recommend it though as its a small fee.
If you have any more questions let me know in the comments?
Good article. So let's say you have a domain name, but somebody want's to have that name more than you, Is there a legal system for a case like that?
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