Registering a URL might be almost one of the last steps you take, but the website name might be mentioned so many times in the site that you usually need to know what URL you will be using before you start. For example, you might list the URL in:
• the about us page
• the contact us page
• whenever you display an email address
• links to paypal or another shopping basket / payment provider
• maybe in banners and graphics
• copyright statements, maybe even overlaid onto pictures
• terms and conditions
The list goes on and on!
Checking the URL is available is fairly easy, but it's not just a matter of typing in the URL and seeing if there's a website. Too many customers have done that then I've had to tell them the URL is registered, just without a website.
There are various tools that you can use to find if the domain name is available, else just go to a site to register the domain name and give it a try. Quite often they will tell you alternatives if the domain is already registered.
Should you register it now or later? Well last month a customer checked a domain was available and sent me an email asking me to register the URL. The email was sent late Saturday so I picked it up on the Monday. I automatically checked if it was available and someone else had registered it on the Sunday. Same happened in about October 2006 - a domain we had previously checked had been taken, only this time it had taken the customer a year to get all of the content to me.
Both of these were unlucky, especially the more recent. But it meant in that case that I had to review the entire site and change every occurrence of the domain name, as over the weekend they had passed me the text with it in.
Where do you go to register a domain name. Well I've listed a few UK Domain Registration companies that you might find useful on my own website.
Tomorrow - what's in a domain name?
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