Frequently Asked Questions » Domain Names

What is Domain Appraisals?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:14:45 +0000

Domain appraisal is an estimated amount that a domain name might fetch when sold. This estimation is based on various factors like the person’s experience in the industry who is appaising the domain name, the domain name extension, the name part of the domain itself (eg. wanttohost is the name part of wanttohost.com). The more generic the name be, the higher it will be priced.

There can be other factors also. Like if the domain is already in use, what kind of traffic it is receiving. Such analysis is particularly useful from marketing point of view. The more the traffic, the more likely the domain will be successful in new hands.

what is Domain Auction?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:13:39 +0000

When someone wants to sell a domain name, they can either fix a particular amount for the domain name or put it on auction where various buyers bid on the domain name. The highest bidder gets to buy the domain for the specified bid. There are several domain auction services in the market. Usually they charge a percentage of the auction price.

What is Domain Forwarding?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:13:20 +0000

When you type a domain name in the address bar, there are chances that you make a mistake. These mistakes are generally in spelling the domain name. To protect their brand, companies usually registry such wrongly spelled domains that their users might type. These wrongly spelled domains are “redirected” to the main domain. This redirection is called domain name forwarding. Domain forwarding is also used for domains with different extensions like .com, .org, . net etc.

And when this redirection is for a url, then it is called url redirection or url forwarding.

For example, www.wanttohost.com is our primary domain. We may secure our brand by buying www.wanttohost.org and forwarding it to www.wanttohost.com which is our primary domain name. We may also consider, www.wantohost.com (note the missing T after ‘www.want’).

What is domain name resellers?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:12:19 +0000

The domain name resellers are sub registrars under a parent registrar that itself is under the domain registry.

Domain resellers are not directly accredited by the registry but they buy-and-sell from domain registrars on little profits.

What is Domain Name?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:11:58 +0000

Each computer that is a part of the internet is identified by a unique address which we call it’s internet address or more prominently, Internet Protocol or IP address, like 255.255.255.0

Each of these 4 blocks of numbers separated by dots can range from 0 to 244. You can imagine the complexity of the IP address and how difficult it is to remember, specially when you have hundreds of IP addresses to remember. To solve this problem, domain names were invented.

A Domain name is an easy-to-read AND remember textual form that can be associated to a particular Internet Protocol (IP) Address. For example, www.wanttohost.com

Our IP address is associated with this domain name. So whenever anyone has to visit our website, they don’t have to play the number game to recall that particular IP address which we are associate with. Simply remember www.wanttohost.com, i.e our domain name and type it in the web browser. You will be automatically taken to our website.

Automatically? Really? No, actually it’s no magic. There is a process behind this called “resolving” or “mapping” of domain names to their respective and unique IP address. This is done by servers which are set up specially for this task and are called Domain Name Servers (DNS).

Who can book a Domain Name?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:11:12 +0000

Anyone! From an individual to an organization to multinational companies. Anyone who wants to have a web presence can book domain name.

These services for domain name registration are provided by domain name registrars who act as a bridge between the domain name registry and the registrant (end consumer).

What is domain name hosting?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:10:49 +0000

Domain name is just an identification of a computer or server over the internet. The websites we associate with these domain names actually physically reside on the hard disk of those computers. Space is required on hard disk to save these files and make them accessible to people using the internet. This space is referred to as web space and the service of providing such space is called web hosting.

Domain name hosting is essentially web hosting.

What are domain extensions?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:10:27 +0000

Each domain name comes with an extension. Dot com (.com) is a domain extension. There several others like .net, .org, .biz etc.

These domain extensions are meant to represent specific business/purposes. For example :

.com is meant for commercial
.org is meant for organization
.biz is meant for business

These domain extensions are also classified based on countries. For example :

.ca is meant for Canada
.us is meant for United States
.in is meant for India

Where can i buy a domain name?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:09:58 +0000

There several domain name registrars, and even domain resellers who offer variety of services at reasonable charge.

However, as i said in an earlier post, be careful of what you pay for and what you get.

What is domain name registrar?

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:09:36 +0000

A domain registry assigns various domain registrars under them to act as resellers to sell products directly to the end customers.

These registrars can further assign sub-registrars which are usually referred as domain resellers. Though these resellers are basically registrars under another registrar, they are not directly accredited by the domain registry.