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Domain Names

A domain name is an address for your website. Computers use IP addresses: long strings of numbers which would be hard to remember. A domain name is designed to be memorable by us.

These addresses are made up of two or three elements. Reading from right to left, the top-level domain (TLD) are the letters at the end (like .uk, .com), that are also known as an extension. The second level domain is the name of your website or company. The third level domain - or subdomain - can be something like blog.example.com or www.example.com.

Your web address (second-level domain) can contain a combination of numbers, letters and hyphens, but not any other punctuation marks or special characters. They ignore upper and lower case, so you can capitalise the first letter of words in publicity material for easy reading. They can be a maximum of 63 letters long.

Domain names are provided by Domain Registrar's where you purchase your domain name in yearly terms. This does means you don't actually own it, but in fact pay a yearly lease to use it. Its important to set auto renewal and keep your email address and payment details up to date.

Which-Top Level Domain?

If you're looking for a website address for a new business, you might like to go for a top-level domain (TLD) that matches your geography - called a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD). Like .uk, .us, .scot, .wales or .it. Or you could chose local, like .london.

Or perhaps you'd prefer something more international like .com, .org, .net, or .info? If it's a personal site, perhaps consider something like .me or .blog?

Or you could go for something more descriptive. The new generic TLDs (gTLD) like .dev, .online, .agency and .solutions offer plenty of options but with well over 400 TLD's available you sure have a lot of choice. Your chosen Domain Registrar should have a full list available for you to search.

Do I need to register my domain names on the same company that I'm hosting my website on? You can register your domains wherever you are happy to and you link the two items together by updating the Nameserver Records.

An outline of the steps to register a domain

Log in to Domain Registrar with your user credentials.

Click Register domain

Fill out the domain name and search for available options.

Choose the numbers of years you like to register for 2 years is usually the default.

Choose whether you'd like Whois Privacy Protection or auto renewal on the domain (if applicable).

Click Register Domain.

Provide contact details for the registrant of the domain, or choose a contact from those you've already created.

Fill out payment details

Click Register Domain.

Each registrar control panel and onboarding process can vary, but the above steps should give you a rough overview but they should have detailed overview for you to follow.

Ready to transfer?

You are able to transfer a Domain Name to another registrar, should you want to say maybe for price reasons or ongoing problems.

The transfer process for domain names varies, dependent on the type of domain in question.

Free domain transfers. It's fast and free to transfer these domains: .co.uk, .me.uk, .ltd.uk, .org.uk, or .uk. You don't even need to host the site with the new register.

You just need to update the the Nominet (IPS) Tag to NewRegisterTag with your current domain registrar.

Login to the new register and start a transfer this will complete usually same day.

For other domain extensions like .com .net you will need to pay for one year renewal or a nominal charge to move these domains to a new home. This acts like a registration, so you get a year renewal-free. the steps are mostly the same as above but you have to get unlock codes and reply to emails which will take longer to transfer the domain. Your new register will have detailed steps for you to follow.

NameServers

Once you have purchased your domain you want to start using it.

So we need to connect it to a Web Hosting package or to where you are going to manage your DNS records. To do this you update the settings of the NameServer records on your Domain Register (Where you registered your domain) to the ones that your Hosting Company provided you with. You will be given two or four NameServer (NS) addresses from your Hosting Account provider. Once you have updated these records to your Hosting Companies then all the DNS records for your domain are managed there.

We explore Domain Name System (DNS) in more details on our DNS page.

NameServer propagation: Please note that it may take up to 24 hours for a NameServer change to propagate fully.

JasmineDesign is available to help and recommend

Here at JasmineDesign we have been working with Domain Names and DNS for a long time, which means that we are able to offer the guidance you may need to get set up and running with a wide range of hosting platforms or be able to solve any problems you are having.

Please Contact Us and we will be very happy to help.