Domain Names – Registration
If you are just starting down the road of commissioning a website, and before you have even decided who is going to build it, we would recommend you start thinking about your domain name. If you already have a company name then it is a good place to start, companyname.com or companyname.co.uk.
If you are starting from scratch and have yet to decide what to call your business then another approach is to look for an available domain name and find one you like, and then base your company name around that. We would not recommend buying an advertised domain name, as they tend to be very expensive, much better to search for a domain name and see if it has already been registered. It will feel like all the good ones have already been taken, so this does require a certain amount of creative thinking and patience.
Once you have found a domain you like I would recommend you secure it as quickly as possible, companies have been known to monitor search enquiries and speculatively register domains with the aim of selling it to you for £500 when only a day before was available for £10.
When selecting a domain name you need to be aware of the following rules:
- Letters are allowed but must be in lower case (they are actually case insensitive)
- Numbers are allowed (but we don’t recommend their use)
- The only symbol allowed is the dash (-), but again we would avoid it if possible
- Domain names can be between 3 and 63 characters in length (the shorter the better)
You only need a single domain to host a web site, but we would always recommend getting the .com equivalent of your domain if it is available. For example, this site can be viewed at lithiumarts.com and lithiumarts.co.uk. With so many domain extensions available people will often try the .com variant first.
If you look at other hosting companies you will see domain registration bundled with website hosting packages. However we feel your domain is far too valuable to you for anyone other than yourselves to have full control over it. For this reason we never offer domain registration services to any of our clients.
Instead we recommend you create an account with 123-reg.co.uk or ukreg.com who specialise in domain registration. We can either take you through the process of changing your DNS settings to use our servers, or do it all for you. Once set up no further changes are required and you have full control of your domain. Just a little example of how we like to put our clients first!
You should note that you will be paying the domain renewals yourself (it costs between £4 and £10 per domain per year depending on the type of domain). If you neglect to renew the domain it can then be purchased by someone else, so always ensure you are prompt with your renewals.
