Why Do You Require a Domain?
This is an issue I broach because of the fact that last week my boss proposed the idea of launching a site for our brand new venture. That itself is not a problem, the problem is that he wants a web site, but has not made a decision yet about what it should look like, what it should contain, etc. All that he mentioned to me was the name of the website - its domain name. Thus, we now have an Internet address for a yet-to-be-made web site and nothing aside from that.
The Domain Name
Each website is located on a physical machine. That physical machine has its own physical address, known also as an Internet Protocol address. Reaching a site by writing the IP of the machine in your browser, however, is not the best and most convenient thing to do, so that was how and why domains came into existence. Hence, a domain name pertains to an IP on the Internet. After it has been registered, of course.
Registering a Domain Name
To register a domain, you first have to settle on a domain name registration provider. ResellersPanel offers an optimal solution for my present and prospective projects - they have a Domain Manager plan, which can be easily upgraded to a web hosting package later on - when my boss eventually determines what objective the web site will have.
Thus, to register a domain, you need to select a name for your website. Then, you have to pick a TLD - this is what comes after the dot. For instance, in 'nytimes.com', '.com' is the Top-Level Domain (TLD). Obviously, '.com' denotes 'company', '.net' denotes 'network', '.org' denotes 'organization', and so on and so forth.
After you've chosen your domain name and your future domain name registration provider, you need to see whether the domain you would like to register is available for registration, because someone else might have seized it before you, however embarrassing it might be. Each domain name registration supplier, including ResellersPanel, has a functionality at their signup page, which verifies the availability of a specific domain. To proceed with the registration of a domain, you need to specify some domain registrant info - the name, the place of residence, the email address and the telephone number of the domain name's owner.
You've Registered a Domain... Now What?
I registered .com, .net, .eu and .info domains for our venture, as per the desire of my still-hesitant-about-the-purpose-of-the-future-site boss. I tested the domain name administration dashboard ResellersPanel is offering and found it extremely easy to use - everything is neatly ordered and, from what I noticed in the hosting Control Panel demo at their site, after we upgrade to a VPS web hosting plan, it will stay the same, but with a lot more features. This, thank heavens, will spare me quite a lot of inconvenience from having to administer my domain and web site hosting account separately. So, while waiting for the boss to make a decision about at least what the website should include, I was glad to discover that the domain administration tool contains DNS management and domain renewal options, and - an extremely convenient feature (!) - a parked domain name template, which I used in order to create a "Coming Soon" page for our domains.
Country-Specific TLDs
I was very happy to find that ResellersPanel is offering numerous country-code TLDs, because the project the site is intended for is multinational. Country-specific TLDs are entrusted to domestic registries, which allow registrars to register domain names, typically at prices that are lower than those offered to the end clients. There are different country-specific Top-Level Domains: .co.uk for the UK, .de for Germany, .me for Montenegro, .us for the United States, .ca for Canada, .com.au for Australia, and so on. This, I presume, will make my boss happy since we will be able to set up a local version of the website for each country where the project will be presented.