In a previous post i covered some of the issues around choosing your domain name, including the search engine ranking benefits to be gained from purchasing multiple domain names. Once you’ve chosen the domains you’re going to use, it’s time to buy them. It’s likely in choosing your domain name that you’ve maybe visited a web site that sells domain names to check availability, but you’re not obliged to use that specific web site and you should shop around for the best deal for you. In this article i’ll give you some links to where i buy domain names, and touch on some of the key things to consider when you’re buying.
How do domain names work
Firstly, a quick overview of how domain names work. A domain name is the unique identifier given to a web site and it’s sub pages. Around the world, there are a series of servers which are set up specifically to direct traffic to a web site based on the domain name you enter into your browser. these are called ‘name servers’. The name servers ‘talk’ to each other, telling each other where to look for a web site given a specific domain name query. These name servers update every few hours, but for this reason, it sometimes takes 24 hrs or more for your new domain name to ‘propagate’ around the world, meaning that whilst you can see your web site when you first launch it, someone in the US might not be able to see it for 24 hours or so.
Until such point as you have a domain name, your web site sits on what is called an IP. You may have occasionally seen web pages that don’t have a domain name but instead the url looks like this: http://78.129.225.186. Try clicking that URL by the way and see what happens. The IP is the same as the domain name. it is a unique identifier which is assigned to a server or section of a server, a bit like a unique telephone number. Even once you’ve assigned your web site a domain name, if you wanted to, you could still access it by IP address. Back in the early days of the internet, someone realised that domain ‘names’ would be easier to remember than domain ‘numbers’, and the domain name was born.
If ever you want to find out what the IP address of a web site is, there are plenty of sites which tell you that. Try visiting http://cqcounter.com/whois/ and enter giteguru.com into the search bar for all sorts of details about my domain, including the IP, who registered it, with which company, and even where my hosting is located.
compra de nombres de dominio
Globally and on a national level, there are organisations set up to control the issuing of domain names at an extension level (ie .com, .co.uk, .net, .biz, .org etc). Then, there is a series of companies around the world who sell domain names to the likes of you or me. These are called domain name registrars and there are literally hundredcon of them. Some however will only sell a certain set of domain extensions (so for example, may not sell .co.uk or .fr if focused particularly on the US market) so to a certain extent, your choice of domain name registrar will be determined by the extension(s) you’re after.
The ease with which you can buy domains differs hugely from country to country. In certain countries, you face a mountain of paperwork (guess which), and in some it’s nearly impossible to buy unless you’re either resident or have a business based there. You’ll be pleased to hear that it’s relatively simple for the US and most western european countries.
Here’s a list of common domain extensions you might consider buying if your rental property is in western Europe;
com
co.uk
de
es
it
fr
nl
There is a whole range of other country extensions and domain extensions available such as .org, .eu, .biz, .net etc, but unless you’re desperate, stick with the main ones such in the list above (unless the domains are just for SEO purposes, see my previous article on choosing a domain name) as the other extensions, being less common, have the tendancy to confuse people a bit. I cover the reasons why you might buy foreign country domain names in my article on domain name strategies also.
Hosting & email packages
At the same time as selling you a domain name, some companies will try to sell you hosting (some domains come with ‘free hosting’ y ‘free email’). My experience with these has been varied. I intend to cover the subject of email and hosting in future posts, but i’ll touch on it now for the sake of completeness. Your hosting is important: it decides how quickly your web site is to load when your customers view it. There’s no greater put-off than a web site which is slow to load, especially if you’ve just invested in a broadband connection and you’re getting used to life in the fast lane!
Many of the companies offering ‘free hosting’ do so by having extremely cheap servers in extremely cheap locations (such as the US) and this can have a major effect on your web site’s loading time, especially from around 3pm GMT when the US wakes up and comes online. Additionally some search engines identify the server location when deciding which countries results to put you amongst, so the server location has SEO implications. If you’re operating in Europe, you should ensure that your server is in Europe and you should know a bit about the server you’re going on before commiting. That said, if anyone out there has any positive experience of free hosting that they’d care to share, please shout up in the comments.
In terms of the ‘free email accounts’, this is less important, but is dependent upon your needs. most domain registrars offer between 1 y 5 free email addresses which should be adequate for most people’s purposes once they’ve used info@, and then a personal address for each member of the family. Otra vez, i’ll cover email in more depth later, but i will say at this point that i’m a great believer in having a professional email address that matches your brand name as your main contact address rather than a hotmail or gmail or orange address etc. It looks more professional, and is another opportunity to re-inforce your brand rather than someone elses (ie Google’s).
Some companies offer paid hosting with the domain name purchase, and this generally makes sense if you’re a novice, as setting up hosting and email seperate to your domain name can be tricky if you don’t know what your doing (involves changing A Name and MX records in the domain admin panel). Personally I buy my domain names from Godaddy.com as they’re very cheap, and then I have my own server for hosting my web sites. If you’re looking for a domain plus hosting package, intentar www.uk2.net (who are based in the UK with their servers in the UK and who also have a great domain search tool on their site). If you need any help with this or want my assistance in setting up your domain name and hosting, ponerse en contacto.
Free domain names
Whilst we’re on the subject of Libre, there are companies who will offer you a ‘free’ nombre de dominio, but this is usually a sub-domain rather than an actual domain. The other day someone showed me their web site on the domain www.mydomain.Libre.fr… having the word ‘free’ in their domain name did little for their luxury brand identity just to save a few quid. My advice is to take the plunge and get yourself a proper domain name.
Protecting your domain
Además, you should do this bit yourself rather than leaving it to your diseñador web. Why? Several times in recent years I’ve been approached for help when unscrupulous web designers are holding their clients to ransom for additional payment or fees by controlling their domain name. Además, i’ve heard of instances where web designers have been filtering their customers email. Seriously. Look forward two years when your web site is your main source of business and imagine your diseñador web turning the domain and all your email off because of some perceived slight. It can and does happen, and registrars will be of little help in fixing the issue if your domain is registered in your web designers name.
If your diseñador web does buy it, ensure that you’re registered as the owner with the domain registrar, and make sure you change the username and password to the admin panel for your domain name once they’ve finished (ensuring you keep a record of the new details somewhere safe). If the designer needs access again, they can always ask you for them.
Renewals
Ahora, all along we’ve been talking about ‘comprar’ a domain name, but in actual fact it would make moe sense to talk about ‘renting’ them, because it’s sadly not a one-off fee. Generally you’ll be sold a domain name for a 1 or 2 Año period, but there are savings to be made by buying a 10 year ‘lease’. If you’re confident in your business, i’d go ahead and buy the 10 year option, both to save some cash and to save the hassle of having to renew every year or two. if you don’t, never fear, as long as you’ve given them the correct contact details your domain registrar will hassle you as the time to renew approaches to seperate you from more of your cash.
So now you’re ready to buy your domain name. All the purchases are online so you’ll need either your credit card or paypal details. Find a domain registrar, search for the domain, see if it’s available, and then go ahead and register it. Expect to pay from about £5 per annum up to about £10 per annum depending on duration of contract and the ‘freebies’ it comes with.
Pointing your domain name
Nota: THIS ONLY APPLIES IF YOUR SITE IS HOSTED ELSEWHERE. IF YOU’VE BOUGHT DOMAIN NAME AND HOSTING TOGETHER, YOU CAN SKIP THIS SECTION.
Finished? Great. Ahora, if you have your site hosted elsewhere, you now need to tell the domain registrar where to ‘point’ the domain name so that it knows which web site it’s associated with. You do this by changing the ‘A name details’ in the ‘DNS recods’ so that it matches the IP address of the location your web site is hosted. You’ll do this through the admin interface of the domain registrar you bought your domain from. they will probably have a ‘manage my domains’ section, and in that section you should look for ‘manage DNS’ or ‘change DNS’.
Importante. there are various different bits to the DNS. There are the ‘A records’ which tell the name servers which IP address is associated with the domain name and direct web visitors around the net. And there are the MX records, which direct EMAILS around the net. You should only change the MX records if you’re tranferring your email hosting to your new host, otherwise you should leave them as the default settings. More on this when i write a bit about email in a future post, but if you get stuck, don’t be afraid to ask for help from the registrar who will usually have telephone support or a web support ticketing system. Don’t forget domain names can take a while to ‘propagate’ around the net, so don’t forget it could take up to 48 hrs for your IP to be associated with your domain or for your email to start working.
Buying a second hand domain name
Finally i’ll touch on buying a second hand domain name. There is a whole web industry around domain ‘prospecting’, ie people buying up domain names which they think they will be able to sell-on at a profit. Algunas veces it’s cold blooded profiteering, sometimes (rarely) it is innocently buying a domain name you subsequently decide against using for whatever reason. As a consquence, that domain name you may be desperate to own may be offered for ‘re-sale’ by a private individual. My advice: don’t bother. In order to make money, these guys have to sell the domains they hold for vastly inflated prices usually hundreds or thousands of pounds, and buying simply encourages the practice which makes things difficult for everyone. with a simple bit of creativity, you’ll be able to find a domain that works or that is suitable for your business (try adding ‘online’ into the domain for example and suddenly you’ll see your new domain is available).
In a future post i intend to compile a list of the best registrars to buy different domain extensions from (with a focus on european domains), so if you have experience of buying different extensions and have a recommendation to make, or if you know of such a list already, please post in the comments below.
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La compra de un nombre de dominio para su albergue
In a previous post i covered some of the issues around choosing your domain name, including the search engine ranking benefits to be gained from purchasing multiple domain names. Once you’ve chosen the domains you’re going to use, it’s time to buy them. It’s likely in choosing your domain name that you’ve maybe visited a web site that sells domain names to check availability, but you’re not obliged to use that specific web site and you should shop around for the best deal for you. In this article i’ll give you some links to where i buy domain names, and touch on some of the key things to consider when you’re buying.
How do domain names work
Firstly, a quick overview of how domain names work. A domain name is the unique identifier given to a web site and it’s sub pages. Around the world, there are a series of servers which are set up specifically to direct traffic to a web site based on the domain name you enter into your browser. these are called ‘name servers’. The name servers ‘talk’ to each other, telling each other where to look for a web site given a specific domain name query. These name servers update every few hours, but for this reason, it sometimes takes 24 hrs or more for your new domain name to ‘propagate’ around the world, meaning that whilst you can see your web site when you first launch it, someone in the US might not be able to see it for 24 hours or so.
Until such point as you have a domain name, your web site sits on what is called an IP. You may have occasionally seen web pages that don’t have a domain name but instead the url looks like this: http://78.129.225.186. Try clicking that URL by the way and see what happens. The IP is the same as the domain name. it is a unique identifier which is assigned to a server or section of a server, a bit like a unique telephone number. Even once you’ve assigned your web site a domain name, if you wanted to, you could still access it by IP address. Back in the early days of the internet, someone realised that domain ‘names’ would be easier to remember than domain ‘numbers’, and the domain name was born.
If ever you want to find out what the IP address of a web site is, there are plenty of sites which tell you that. Try visiting http://cqcounter.com/whois/ and enter giteguru.com into the search bar for all sorts of details about my domain, including the IP, who registered it, with which company, and even where my hosting is located.
compra de nombres de dominio
Globally and on a national level, there are organisations set up to control the issuing of domain names at an extension level (ie .com, .co.uk, .net, .biz, .org etc). Then, there is a series of companies around the world who sell domain names to the likes of you or me. These are called domain name registrars and there are literally hundredcon of them. Some however will only sell a certain set of domain extensions (so for example, may not sell .co.uk or .fr if focused particularly on the US market) so to a certain extent, your choice of domain name registrar will be determined by the extension(s) you’re after.
The ease with which you can buy domains differs hugely from country to country. In certain countries, you face a mountain of paperwork (guess which), and in some it’s nearly impossible to buy unless you’re either resident or have a business based there. You’ll be pleased to hear that it’s relatively simple for the US and most western european countries.
Here’s a list of common domain extensions you might consider buying if your rental property is in western Europe;
There is a whole range of other country extensions and domain extensions available such as .org, .eu, .biz, .net etc, but unless you’re desperate, stick with the main ones such in the list above (unless the domains are just for SEO purposes, see my previous article on choosing a domain name) as the other extensions, being less common, have the tendancy to confuse people a bit. I cover the reasons why you might buy foreign country domain names in my article on domain name strategies also.
Hosting & email packages
At the same time as selling you a domain name, some companies will try to sell you hosting (some domains come with ‘free hosting’ y ‘free email’). My experience with these has been varied. I intend to cover the subject of email and hosting in future posts, but i’ll touch on it now for the sake of completeness. Your hosting is important: it decides how quickly your web site is to load when your customers view it. There’s no greater put-off than a web site which is slow to load, especially if you’ve just invested in a broadband connection and you’re getting used to life in the fast lane!
Many of the companies offering ‘free hosting’ do so by having extremely cheap servers in extremely cheap locations (such as the US) and this can have a major effect on your web site’s loading time, especially from around 3pm GMT when the US wakes up and comes online. Additionally some search engines identify the server location when deciding which countries results to put you amongst, so the server location has SEO implications. If you’re operating in Europe, you should ensure that your server is in Europe and you should know a bit about the server you’re going on before commiting. That said, if anyone out there has any positive experience of free hosting that they’d care to share, please shout up in the comments.
In terms of the ‘free email accounts’, this is less important, but is dependent upon your needs. most domain registrars offer between 1 y 5 free email addresses which should be adequate for most people’s purposes once they’ve used info@, and then a personal address for each member of the family. Otra vez, i’ll cover email in more depth later, but i will say at this point that i’m a great believer in having a professional email address that matches your brand name as your main contact address rather than a hotmail or gmail or orange address etc. It looks more professional, and is another opportunity to re-inforce your brand rather than someone elses (ie Google’s).
Some companies offer paid hosting with the domain name purchase, and this generally makes sense if you’re a novice, as setting up hosting and email seperate to your domain name can be tricky if you don’t know what your doing (involves changing A Name and MX records in the domain admin panel). Personally I buy my domain names from Godaddy.com as they’re very cheap, and then I have my own server for hosting my web sites. If you’re looking for a domain plus hosting package, intentar www.uk2.net (who are based in the UK with their servers in the UK and who also have a great domain search tool on their site). If you need any help with this or want my assistance in setting up your domain name and hosting, ponerse en contacto.
Free domain names
Whilst we’re on the subject of Libre, there are companies who will offer you a ‘free’ nombre de dominio, but this is usually a sub-domain rather than an actual domain. The other day someone showed me their web site on the domain www.mydomain.Libre.fr… having the word ‘free’ in their domain name did little for their luxury brand identity just to save a few quid. My advice is to take the plunge and get yourself a proper domain name.
Protecting your domain
Además, you should do this bit yourself rather than leaving it to your diseñador web. Why? Several times in recent years I’ve been approached for help when unscrupulous web designers are holding their clients to ransom for additional payment or fees by controlling their domain name. Además, i’ve heard of instances where web designers have been filtering their customers email. Seriously. Look forward two years when your web site is your main source of business and imagine your diseñador web turning the domain and all your email off because of some perceived slight. It can and does happen, and registrars will be of little help in fixing the issue if your domain is registered in your web designers name.
If your diseñador web does buy it, ensure that you’re registered as the owner with the domain registrar, and make sure you change the username and password to the admin panel for your domain name once they’ve finished (ensuring you keep a record of the new details somewhere safe). If the designer needs access again, they can always ask you for them.
Renewals
Ahora, all along we’ve been talking about ‘comprar’ a domain name, but in actual fact it would make moe sense to talk about ‘renting’ them, because it’s sadly not a one-off fee. Generally you’ll be sold a domain name for a 1 or 2 Año period, but there are savings to be made by buying a 10 year ‘lease’. If you’re confident in your business, i’d go ahead and buy the 10 year option, both to save some cash and to save the hassle of having to renew every year or two. if you don’t, never fear, as long as you’ve given them the correct contact details your domain registrar will hassle you as the time to renew approaches to seperate you from more of your cash.
So now you’re ready to buy your domain name. All the purchases are online so you’ll need either your credit card or paypal details. Find a domain registrar, search for the domain, see if it’s available, and then go ahead and register it. Expect to pay from about £5 per annum up to about £10 per annum depending on duration of contract and the ‘freebies’ it comes with.
Pointing your domain name
Nota: THIS ONLY APPLIES IF YOUR SITE IS HOSTED ELSEWHERE. IF YOU’VE BOUGHT DOMAIN NAME AND HOSTING TOGETHER, YOU CAN SKIP THIS SECTION.
Finished? Great. Ahora, if you have your site hosted elsewhere, you now need to tell the domain registrar where to ‘point’ the domain name so that it knows which web site it’s associated with. You do this by changing the ‘A name details’ in the ‘DNS recods’ so that it matches the IP address of the location your web site is hosted. You’ll do this through the admin interface of the domain registrar you bought your domain from. they will probably have a ‘manage my domains’ section, and in that section you should look for ‘manage DNS’ or ‘change DNS’.
Importante. there are various different bits to the DNS. There are the ‘A records’ which tell the name servers which IP address is associated with the domain name and direct web visitors around the net. And there are the MX records, which direct EMAILS around the net. You should only change the MX records if you’re tranferring your email hosting to your new host, otherwise you should leave them as the default settings. More on this when i write a bit about email in a future post, but if you get stuck, don’t be afraid to ask for help from the registrar who will usually have telephone support or a web support ticketing system. Don’t forget domain names can take a while to ‘propagate’ around the net, so don’t forget it could take up to 48 hrs for your IP to be associated with your domain or for your email to start working.
Buying a second hand domain name
Finally i’ll touch on buying a second hand domain name. There is a whole web industry around domain ‘prospecting’, ie people buying up domain names which they think they will be able to sell-on at a profit. Algunas veces it’s cold blooded profiteering, sometimes (rarely) it is innocently buying a domain name you subsequently decide against using for whatever reason. As a consquence, that domain name you may be desperate to own may be offered for ‘re-sale’ by a private individual. My advice: don’t bother. In order to make money, these guys have to sell the domains they hold for vastly inflated prices usually hundreds or thousands of pounds, and buying simply encourages the practice which makes things difficult for everyone. with a simple bit of creativity, you’ll be able to find a domain that works or that is suitable for your business (try adding ‘online’ into the domain for example and suddenly you’ll see your new domain is available).
In a future post i intend to compile a list of the best registrars to buy different domain extensions from (with a focus on european domains), so if you have experience of buying different extensions and have a recommendation to make, or if you know of such a list already, please post in the comments below.
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