Domain Names

Domain Name Services

Most of our clients require a domain name for their website, however you may simply want to register one for future use, or buy a name and point it to some existing hosting space. Our range of domain name services gives our clients the freedom to manage their domain name investments as they want.

Web Forwarding

If you already have some hosting space, possibly provided by your I.S.P., and you just want your own domain name to 'point' to this space then you need our Web Forwarding service. You have the choice of normal redirection (where the address in the browser changes), or frames-based redirection (where your domain name is always visible).

Domain Parking

If you would simply like to reserve a domain name for future use you need our Domain Parking service - we register your chosen name using the details you supply and will hold it for you for as long as required. Simply choose the Domain Parking option when you add your domain name to your shopping basket.

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About Domain Names

Domain names can be broadly divided into two groups, global/generic and country specific (there is a third group of interest only to network administrators - .arpa). For most businesses we recommend the generic commercial and the country-specific commercial extensions both be purchased where possible - e.g. your-name.com and your-name.co.uk. This should give maximum search engine penetration, while protecting your brand name from competitors.

Try and avoid domain names that are the same as or very similar to a competitors as your main brand, but register them if possible to deny them to your competition.

For example, if your main competitor's website is pink-widgets.com, and you register pink-widgets.co.uk as your name there is a possibility that your visitors may end up at your competitions site because they got your domain name wrong - hardly the ideal result. In such a case we would advise you to use widgets-in-pink as your brand, but register pink-widgets.co.uk and point it to widgets-in-pink.co.uk.

Allowable Characters

The vast majority of doman names are limited to the characters 'a' through to 'z', the numerals '0' to '9' and the hyphen character. Some foriegn registries support domain names using accented or language-specific characters, however for UK-based organisations these are not recommended. Further rules are that names cannot start or end with a hyphen, and should be less than about 60 characters in length. Most registries have a minimum length of three characters, with two characters allowed in some cases - few allow single character domain names. If in doubt refer to the registry responsible, (Nominet for UK domains or ICANN for gTLDs).

Domain Levels

Domain names are a representation of a tree structure written backwards - third-level.second-level.top-level. For global extensions (e.g. .com) you chose the second-level part of the name, however some countries divide their top-level domain into second-level 'sub-domains' such as '.co.uk', in which case you chose the third-level part. The (usually optional) leftmost part is almost always 'www' for websites.

At a minimum a domain name must have a second level and a top level - probably the simplest name is 'i.am', but names can have more than three or four levels, though more than five is uncommon.

There are several companies selling domains which are either non-ICANN approved or are third level sub-domains of generic extensions (such as '.eu.com'). You can be sure that all of the domain extensions we offer are ICANN approved.

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