Domains Explained

One of the most crucial prerequisites for creating a successful online presence is the domain. It is what people will see first when they visit your web page and what they will relate you with. The domain should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that notifies your web page's visitors what the web site is about.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

A domain traditionally contains two parts - a Top-Level Domain Name (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain (SLD). If you have domain.com, for example, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain Name. There are several sets of TLDs that you should contemplate prior to choosing the domain you want. Your selection should depend on the purpose of your website and on its target audience. Let's investigate the gTLDs, or generic Top-Level Domains - these are the most typical TLDs meant to express a given function - .com (commercial organizations), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (companies), .info (informational sites), .org (organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific region), .name (individuals or relatives), .pro (certain professions), etc. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domains cover most spheres of life, so you should go for the one that would portray the purpose of your site best. There is no restriction as to who can register such domains, but some of them include additional steps to demonstrate that you qualify to have such a Top-Level Domain Name (.mobi and .pro, for instance).

Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code TLDs, are country-specific Top-Level Domains. Each country has its own ccTLD. Selecting such a domain is good if your target group of web page visitors is from a specific country. Many guys would elect to buy goods or services from a local web site, and if your goal is Canada, for instance, picking a .ca domain could increase the visits to your website.

Domain Forwarding

You can register a number of domains, which can send your web page's visitors to a given site like domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and reduce the likelihood of somebody pinching your website visitors by registering the same name with another Top-Level Domain Name - if you are not using a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Each Top-Level Domain has domain records. The name server records (NS records, aka DNS records) reveal where the domain is hosted, in other words they point to the hosting company whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is using at the moment. You can modify the NSs of your domain name whenever you wish. You can have your domain registered with one company and get the web hosting service itself from another. Thus, if you register your domain name and discover decent website hosting packages someplace else at a later time, you can point your domain to the current provider's DNSs immediately.

Domain Server Records (NS Records)

On the whole, as long as your domain utilizes a certain set of NSs, all its records will direct to the same hosting supplier. Some hosting firms, however, enable you to modify specific name server records, such as the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an IP address, which discloses on which web server your site is located, whereas the MX records designate which server tackles the email address accounts associated with your domain name. For example, if you take on a new web page designer and he sets up an .ASP web site that will be located on his own Windows hosting server, you may want to change solely the Internet Protocol address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain name. Hence, www.domain.com will point to the Windows hosting server, but your electronic mails or any sub-domains such as forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your current Linux website hosting account. The .ASP platform is developed by Microsoft and demands a Windows hosting server, even though a Linux hosting server would be far more reliable.

Cheap TLDs Provided by 'Helios Host'

Just a small number of web hosting suppliers enable you to edit particular records and quite frequently this an additional paid service. With us, you get an enormous array of Top-Level Domain Names to pick from and you can edit all domain name records or forward the domain names via a forwarding tool at no extra cost.