How essential can an affordable domain name be?

One of the most important preconditions for building a successful online presence is the domain name. It is what people will observe first when they stumble upon your site and what they will associate you with. The domain name should be easy to remember, but should also be something that notifies your website's visitors what the site is about.

Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs)

A domain traditionally consists of 2 components - 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. There are several sets of TLDs that you should examine before you pick the domain you wish. Your choice should be built upon the goal of your site and on its target viewers. Let's have a peek at the gTLDs, or generic TLDs - these are the most widespread Top-Level Domains meant to indicate a particular purpose - .com (business enterprises), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (businesses), .info (informative resources), .org (not-for-profit organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific), .name (individuals or families), .pro (specific walks of life), etc. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domain Names cover most spheres of life, so you should go for the one that would illustrate the purpose of your web page best. There is no limitation as to who can register such domains, but some of them involve extra requirements to confirm that you are eligible to register such a domain (.mobi and .pro, for instance).

Country-code Top-Level Domain Names (ccTLDs)

The ccTLDs, or country-code TLDs, are country-specific domains. Each country has its own ccTLD. Getting such a domain is good if your target group of web site visitors is from a certain country. Many people would rather buy goods or services from a local web page, and if your goal is Canada, for instance, selecting a .ca domain could boost the visits to your web site.

Domain Name Forwarding

You can register a number of Top-Level Domain Names, which can forward your website's visitors to a given site like domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and decrease the possibility of someone swiping your visitors by registering the same SLD with another TLD - if you are not availing of a trademark.

Name Servers (NSs)

Every domain has domain name records. The name server records (NS records, a.k.a. DNS records) exhibit where the domain is hosted, i.e. they point to the hosting company whose name servers (NSs, a.k.a. DNSs) it is utilizing at present. You can substitute the name servers of your domain name whenever you wish. You can have your domain registered with one company and get the website hosting service itself from another. So, if you register your domain and discover decent website hosting services somewhere else later, you can point your domain to the present provider's DNSs straight away.

Domain Name Server Records (NS Records)

On the whole, as long as your domain name uses a given set of name servers, all its records will direct to the same web page hosting distributor. Some web site hosting firms, though, permit you to modify certain domain records, including the A records and the MX records of your domain. The A record is an Internet Protocol address, which reveals on which web hosting server your web site is situated, while the MX records designate which hosting server tackles the email box accounts associated with your domain name. For instance, if you appoint a new web page designer and he devises an .ASP site that will be situated on his personal Windows hosting server, you may want to modify only the IP address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain. In this way, www.domain.com will point to the Windows web server, but your mails or any sub-domains like forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your current Linux web hosting account. The .ASP environment is devised by Microsoft and requires a Windows hosting server, even though a Linux web server would be far more reliable.

Cheap Top-Level Domain Names Offered by 'AIDA Host'

Only a small number of web hosting vendors permit you to edit given domain records and quite frequently this an additional paid service. With AIDA Host , you have an immense array of Top-Level Domains to pick from and you can edit all NS records or forward the domains through a forwarding tool at no additional charge. Because of that, 'AIDA Host' would be your finest choice when it comes to handling your domain and to building a successful presence on the Internet.