By Barbara Bouton

Having your own domain name gives your site a more professional appearance. But it also has other advantages. Domains can be easily transferred from ISP to ISP without changing the domain name.

So, as long as you pay your registration fees to the domain name registrar that issued your name, friends, family, customers, and regular visitors will always be able to find your site—www.smithindustries.com—no matter how many different ISPs you may use through the years.

The reason you can switch ISPs and still be found is because a domain name is a human-friendly alias that refers to those dot addresses you see sometimes, such as 24.92.226.135.

A dot address, more formally known as an IP address, is assigned to you when you open an account with a hosting ISP. When users want to connect to your site, they enter your domain address or click on a link that contains the address. The request is then sent to a domain name server (DNS) that looks up your domain address in a big database to find out what your current IP address is, so that connection can be made. If you think about it, it's like your own name. If you move, your postal address changes but your name doesn't.

How Do I Get One?

Domain names are issued by domain name registrars. Currently, the most popular domain names end in the first level domains of .com, .edu, .net, and .org. These kinds of domain names are, for the present, issued exclusively by Internic .

There are other first level domains other than the ones issued by Internic. First level domains such as .gov and .mil are issued to U.S. government sites and U.S. military sites, and each has its own registrar. Then there is the system of domains based on geographic location. Each country in the world has its own registrar and its own domain extension--US for the United States, UK for the United Kingdom, SE for Sweden, PL for Poland, and so on. Internic offers information and links to other registrars at http://www.internic.net/help/other-reg.html.

And once all the world Internet politics get straightened out, there will be even more registrars and more first level domains that may be things such as .biz, .sex, .shop.

The Internic charges $70 to register a new domain name. The initial registration fee covers two years of use. After that, registrations cost $35 annually to renew. These fees are paid directly to Internic. There is a slight catch to registering a domain name. You must have an IP address, and you can't get one of those unless an ISP gives you one of theirs. Registries other than Internic may have different rules and fee structures.

How to Check If the Domain Name You Want Is Available

Your biggest challenge in getting a domain name is to think of one that hasn't already been snapped up. So put on your thinking cap, think of several, and be prepared to compromise. Once you've got your list of possible names, go to Internic's Whois service (http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois) and see if the name has been registered. From that page, you also can jump to Whois databases for other registry services.

"Parking" a Domain Name

But what do you do if you want to secure a domain name before someone else grabs it, but you're not ready to use it just yet? You park it! You put it in storage. The vast majority of ISPs will let you use them as your official ISP for registration purposes, and charge you very little or nothing at all for the service. You also are not obligated to use them as your host when you eventually are ready to go on-line. Of course, they provide parking services for free in the hope that you will buy your hosting services from them. So play nice--if you park a domain somewhere, try to be as sure as you possibly can that you will eventually become a paying customer.

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