Popular questions about choosing a domain name?
Posted by Fione Tan, Head Internet Marketing Coach
Ready to register your own domain name? Unsure what needs to be done before you choose your domain name? Here are some popular questions asked by entrepreneurs that are starting an Internet Business. Part 1 discusses the issues related to registering a domain name while Part 2 will be covering other topics such as how to transfer a domain name.
1. Do i need a website before i register for a domain name?
No, you don’t need a website before registering a domain name. When you find a great domain name, wait no more and directly buy this .com name first and then decide on how you want to create your website
- normally your domain registrar (the website where you purchased the domain name from), will give you a temporary under construction webpage
2. Do i need to buy hosting before i register for a website domain name?
- you don’t need a hosting account initially as well. Therefore, unless you already know how you will design your website and what software you will choose, then you can add on the web hosting packages at a later date
- some domain name company also offers online site builder like the do-it-yourself website builder we have at http://www.eonenet.com/eoneweb/affordable_web_design.htm where you can just use the given online templates, fill up the forms and your website can be ready in minutes
- if using Dreamweaver or Frontpage to design your website, you will need to buy a hosting account to host your website files
3. Can my website have more than 1 domain name?
Yes, your website can have more than one domain name. This doesn’t mean you display all the registered domain names in your website home page as your website name. You can setup the domain forwarding or url forwarding for each domain name to all go to the same website or to individual different webpages.
Some domain name reigstration companies such as FreeDomainsRegistration.com provides free email forwarding, free starter webpage, free domain masking and other services with their domain name registration fees, while other companies might charge you separately for each of the service.
Domain forwarding / url forwarding : Domain if typed, will go to website and the internet browser will display the actual website url
Sample : http://www.1InternetMarketingBlog.com will directly bring the visitors to our internet marketing blog at http://www.eOneNet.com/internet_marketing_blog and the actual url (of eonenet.com) will be shown in the internet browser
Domain cloaking / domain masking : Domain if typed, will go to website and the internet browser will display only the domain name but not the actual webpage url
For instance, you have purchased the domain name called http://www.e1Net.com.cn and this is set to go to the website of http://www.eOneNet.com
Therefore if you have purchased 3 domain names but only have 1 website, you might as well set all the domain names to the same website first for the time being.
4. Does registering my .com means i can have the email account?
- this depends on your domain name company. Most of them will provide you with the free email forwarding (similar concept to the domain forwarding above), whereby your email@domain.com will automatically be sent to your yahoo, hotmail or other emails.
- however in the case above, you will not be able to reply back to your customers using email@domain.com but can only use your current email to reply (so less professional)
- you can buy pop3 email accounts via your email hosting package whereby you can send and receive email using your email@domain.com
- if having your own webhosting packages already then you can use the webhosting account to create your email accounts
5. What do i need to watch out for when registering my domain name?
- you should ensure that you purchase your domain name using your valid name, address, tel and email as when there are any issues related to your domain name in the future, you need to proof your identity. Moreover they will email you before the domain name expires to remind you of the domain name renewal.
6. How do i know what domain names i can register?
- you can directly go to domain name registration companies like www.FreeDomainsRegistration.com to check it your choice of domain name is still available. If the results shows that the name is still available, then you can immediately buy online with your credit card or paypal account.
- after registering your domain name, you should copy out your id and password to access your domain manager and keep this information in a safe location
6. How do i know who is the owner of the domain name?
- after doing a search for your domain name, and you discover that this domain name is unavailable, you can click on the search results to view the owner’s particulars. Unless the owner paid extra to hide his contact particulars (also known as private registration & available for clients who paid extra to use this service), then you can see the name, phone, email and even address of the domain name owner
Do feel free to list out any questions you might have about the domain answers above in our comments section.
Related Posts
Making You No.1 on the Net
If you like our Internet Marketing Blog, join to receive our blog updates for free here
March 5th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
How much and how can I pay for the domain name?
March 5th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
after i got the domain that i wanted how can i resell it?
March 5th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Interesting and helpful content for new internet user.
Tq so much for the effort.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
What is a good domain name?
March 5th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I gained great knowkedge from your blog. It is really useful to me.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Hello Fione,
Great tips! So the next question is, now to chose that name? Should it be short and easy to remember, does it need to refect the service or product you sell or can it be a name like google!
March 7th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hi ANdrew,
The price of the domain can be varied depending on which company you purchase from
- eg US$6 to US$35 per year for a .com
- the one in FreeDomainsRegistration.com is US$26 for 2 years
rgds Fione
March 7th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Mak & Stephen,
We’ll cover this topic about what is a good domain name in the upcoming blog post so do check this out ya
rgds Fione
March 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Chak,
Reselling domain names can be done in 2 basic ways so i’ll come up with an article on this soon
rgds fione
March 9th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Choosing a good domain name is one of the most important steps to starting an online business. I didn’t actually realise its importance until I found out that how profitable selling a good domain name is, after attending Fione’s seminar.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:56 am
This is good tips. I may consider to change my online bookstore name. Thanks.
Regards,
Andy
Cocomartini
May 11th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
it provides mach knowledge how to create a website & register a domain
name and register.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
It provides clear & useful informations
to teach us how to create web site, how to build up
easy- remember title and then
registeration of good domain name and make
people to find yr website on line. It’s great!