Name Your Domain

Sooner or later you may decide that you want your own Internet address, whether for your business, family, organization or just as a hobby. Giving someone their own domain name also makes a unique gift.

Once you have a domain name, you can establish a personalized e-mail address. Instead of randy2043@yahoo.com, you can be randy@thekimfamily.com.

How do you go about it? If all this is new to you, first read our Domain Name article.

Before you starting thinking of a name, consider these technical requirements:

1.A domain name can have up to 67 characters, including the extension, such as .com, at the end.

2.The name can include numbers and all 26 letters of the alphabet, but not special characters such as @, #, $, ?, etc.

3.The exception is hyphens ( - ), but they can't occur at the beginning or end of the name.

4.No spaces can be used within a name.

5.A domain name is not case sensitive--learnthenet.com is the same as LearnTheNet.com

With millions of domain names already taken, finding the name of your dreams may be impossible. But with some creativity and flexibility, you can still register a good one. The name you ultimately select really depends on how you plan to use it.

Let's say you want a name for a family website. Perhaps hernandez.com is already taken. Alternatives include hernandezfamily.com, thehernandezfamily.com and hernandez-family.com.

While most domain names end with .com, you're not restricted to this. You can also register names ending in .net, .org and a number of other relatively new extensions like .name, .info and .pro.

A few other points to keep in mind:

• The shorter the name, the better. (But it should reflect your family name, interest or business.)
• The name should be easy to remember.
• It should be easy to type without making mistakes.
• The Internet has become a global medium. Ideally, a domain name will "read" in a language other than English.

Last update: Jan 18, 2010