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Buying a domain is the first step of building a website after all the planning is done. In this tutorial, we'll describe everything about domain names is and show you several techniques to choosing good domain names.

What is a domain name?

In simple terms, a domain name is an unique address for a website; just like how your house has an address. If you want to go to Google, you would use your internet browser to go to http://www.google.com. The "google.com" part in the URL (http://www.google.com) is the domain name.

Anatomy of a domain name

A domain consist of two parts. The first part can be almost anything you want. This part is where you would enter in your company name and/or a description of the company. For example, here on freeonlineclasses.net, we use tutorialtron as the first part of the domain. The second part is the extension that describes the website or company but many times, the extension is used as an alternative if the .com domain is not available. Most domains end in .com but they can also end in many other extensions such as .net, .org, and many more.

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Finding a domain name

Choosing a domain name is quite difficult because most of the good domain names are taken. There are many websites you can use to check of a domain is available. One tool I recommend is the bulk domain check by DomainTools.com. Using the bulk domain check tool, you can enter in many domains and check if they are available in one step.

First step is to choose a domain name that will describe your company or website. It would make no sense to use k90f23rfa.com because it makes no sense and it is too difficult to remember. Examples of good domain names are yourcompany.com or buywidgets.com. Lets say your company is called Pasta on Main and it is a restaurant. First, you would try check if pastaonmain.com is available. If that domain is taken, here are several methods you may use to get a unique domain that'll describe your company/website:

• Pick a different extension. There are many extensions to choose from. For example, you may choose pastaonmain.net, pastaonmain.ws, or pastaonmain.ca (if the restaurant is located in Canada). It wouldn't really make sense to pick something like pastaonmain.org because the restaurant isn't an organization
• Add words to the domain name. For example, you may enter restaurant in the domain so that it becomes pastaonmainrestaurant.com.
• Find a domain before you pick a company name. This is perhaps the best method to use but it should be done as the beginning steps of building a company. Many new websites start off by making sure that the domain is available to register or purchase before picking the company name. For example, flickr is a unique company name but before they decided on the name, they had to make sure the domain name was available to register or purchase off someone else.
• Mix the words around. Lets say carsdogscats.com is taken. You may also mix the words around to get dogscarscats.com.
• Abbreviate. This method, if it works, may make the domain shorter and easier to remember. For example, if you want to buy newyorkpasta.com but it's already taken, you can try nypasta.com.
• Use domain name generators. Domain name generators work by using the keywords you input to a list of domains with that keyword. A good tool to use is Make Words. With Make Words, you can search for available domain names with the keyword or generate random domain names.

Buying the domain name

Once you have the domain name decided you can purchase a domain from one of many registrars. When buying a domain name, make sure you buy it from a big company. Although issues with domains are rare, I once encountered problems with a web hosting company who tried to hijack my domain name and I had to call Tucows (The company they get their domains from) to have them release it back to me. There's no reason to buy from small web hosting companies and they are usually no cheaper than the most popular ones out there. Below is a list of the most popular domain registrars:

Statistics based on December 2007

Theres so many domain registrars to choose from, but I recommend 1&1 Internet AG due to their low price and high number of domains hosted. Although 1&1 Internet AG isn't in the top 10 most domains hosted, they are one of the fastest growing domain registrars.