Domains

Choosing the right domain name for your business is a crucial decision, that’s because your domain name is way more than the words you type into the browser, it’s your business online identity. Choosing the wrong domain name will make it harder to achieve success for your business. But choosing the right domain name will make it much easier to achieve your online business success. But, how exactly do you choose the right domain name for your business? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Below you’ll find the most comprehensive guide with the top tips and tricks to help you pick the right domain name for your business. What’s the difference between the Domain and the URL? First of all, before we go further, let’s figure out what a domain is. Look at your browser and you will see something like this ‘https://yoursite.com’. The whole line is the URL or (Uniform Resource Locater). The domain simply is the second part of the URL; for us, it’s ‘hostilica.com’. Which is divided into two parts, the first part is the second-level domain (SLD) which is ‘hostilica’ in our example, the second part is the top-level domain (TLD) which is ‘.com’. You can also find more about the .COM domain in our article What is .COM domain name?. We recommend searching your “.com” domain and register it even if you are not planning to own a website soon. but your “.com” domain will be yours forever.  [themify_layout_part slug=”web-hosting-discount”] Okay, let’s get into the business. 1. How to Choose a Domain Name, and Why it Matters? Well, because your domain name is a big part of your business. It’s a part of your brand. If you managed to choose a memorable name that reflects your business identity, it will be much easier for your visitors to remember your domain and find you. On the other hand, if you chose a long name that’s hard to spell and/or hard to read, that’s maybe a reason that your potential visitors can’t make it to your website. We recommend that it should be between 6 to 14 characters. So, just choosing the right domain name will make your online life much easier. We’ll learn to be creative and clever in choosing the right domain that instantly reflects to your visitors what your website is all about. 2. Choosing a TLD That Suits Your Needs As we mentioned earlier, TLD stands for top level domain. The most common TLDs are .com, .net, and .org. But there are over a thousand TLDs to choose from, so how do you choose the right TLD for you? Here are some tips to keep in mind that would help you out. The .COM TLD: The .com TLD or top level domain is the most commonly used and recognized TLD in the world. So, most people have a built-in relationship with .com being the primary TLD. By the way, that’s because the .com TLD is one from the oldest and original line-up of six TLDs, which are (.com => commercial, .net => network, .org => organization, .edu => education, .gov => government, .mil => military). So, you can take advantage of the .com TLD popularity and use this to build a higher-quality brand. You can Try a New TLDs: Here at HOSTILICA, you can get plenty of new domain extensions if you decided to go unique. You can look for a generic top-level domain (gTLD) like a .INC, WEBSITE, STORE, or .APP or you can look for a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) like .US, .DE, .CA, and so on.   What About GeoTLD or GTLD? The easiest way to tell your users – and search engines- that your website is aimed at them is to choose either a country code top-level domain (ccTLD), as we mentioned before or a geographic top-level domain (GeoTLD). While the (ccTLD) represents a country such as the US, (GeoTLD) represents specific geographical locations of continents, as an example, .ASIA, .AFRICA, .NYC, and so on. 3. Choosing a Domain Name for Your Business or Personal Website Let’s discover the best ways to get domain selection ideas and suggestions to help you decide! The easiest way for choosing a good website name is to grab a pen and paper and start writing down any words related to your business, product, or the service you provide. Keep in mind that it’s possible that the domain you want to be already taken, so you might need to be creative and think outside the box. The other way is to use Google Keyword Planner, to help you choose the right domain name if you’re stuck for ideas. Note that keywords are not only for content because search engines use your domain name to understand what your site is about and help determine search rankings. This tool lets you explore the keywords by search volume and many other factors to let you identify the terms people use to search for something on Google. Here are some very important tips to consider when choosing a domain name: Keep it short Without any doubt keeping your domain as short as possible will help you make your brand more memorable. The fewer characters your domain has, the easier it’ll be to say, type, and share with others. It might be hard nowadays to find a single word domain name that’s related to your business; however, you can combine two or three short words together to make a memorable domain name. Plus, consider that more interns users nowadays use their mobiles to browse the web, so you need to make it easy for them to type your domain name into their mobile browser. Choose a Domain Name that’s Easy to Pronounce and Spell You surely want your domain name to be memorable. So, note that Word-of-mouth is still one of the most powerful advertising techniques. When you choose a domain name that’s easy to pronounce and spell, that makes it easy for people to share your domain name with themselves, remember it more easily, and increase the odds that more people will visit and share your website among their networks. Avoid Hyphens and Doubled Letters Using hyphens

Nowadays users’ expect to perform complex online transactions in a fraction of a second, but one of the obstacles to performance is the DNS System. Even the smallest change to the DNS system could take between a few hours and a few days to be propagated across the Internet. When you change a DNS record, you can’t be sure when the change will happen. In this article, we’ll explain what DNS Propagation is and the causes of the propagation problem.   What is the DNS system? The (Domain Name Server) DNS System is an infrastructure that enables translating a human-readable domain name such as “www.yourDomainName.com” into an IP Address such as “289.93.112.22”. The DNS system is a distributed system that relies on multiple layers of DNS servers. When a web browser needs to know the IP for a host-name, it begins with a process called “DNS Lookup”, it asks a DNS server and might be referred to many other DNS servers until it reaches the name server that holds the IP address for the required host-name. At each stage in the DNS lookup process, systems might store DNS information in their local cache.   What is DNS Propagation? When you change an IP address or any other information about a host-name in a DNS record, this change needs to propagate to all systems around the world which are involved in the DNS process. If you made a change in a DNS record, then a client performs a DNS query and reaches a system that has not propagated yet, that client will receive the old information/address because that change hasn’t yet propagated to reach that user. DNS propagation is the time a “DNS Change” takes to be updated in all DNS servers across the Internet. A change to a DNS record might be, for example, changing the IP address for a specific host-name – and this could take up to 72 hours to propagate worldwide, but it typically takes a few hours in many use cases.   Why DNS Propagation Takes So Long?  There are 2 main factors that case DNS propagation, which are: TTL (Time To Live) Settings:  Every DNS record has a TTL value, which is the time DNS servers should store that record in their cache, even if a DNS record is changed, DNS servers will continue working with its old value from the cache until this time has passed. ISP (Internet Service Provider):  Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world cache DNS records to make users access websites more quickly. For each website, they perform a DNS lookup once and then use the result for as many users as possible to access the website more quickly. Some ISPs ignore TTL settings and use DNS records in cache even if the TTL period has expired, and this can make the DNS propagation take longer.   How to Speed up DNS Propagation?  Most elements in the DNS system are not under your control, ISPs and DNS servers around the world have their own policies, but there are still simple ways to speed up DNS propagation which are: Define an A record that points your host-name to the new destination IP address. Set a minimal TTL for DNS records – recommended 5 minutes – because many ISPs might ignore the TTL when it’s below 5 minutes and retain the old record in their cache.  In most cases, these simple steps will speed up DNS propagation. However, there is no way to predict or know how long DNS propagation will take.   Is there a Solution For the Delay of DNS Propagation…?  Yes, there is the next generation of DNS technology. It’s a DNS platform that offers nearly instant-propagation. Any DNS change is propagated in just a few seconds worldwide.  This new technology uses a global network of fast DNS servers that could respond to DNS requests more quickly and allows users to set low TTL

  Are you thinking of starting your own website but feeling a bit confused about what is a domain name, what is the difference between a domain name and a website, how does it work? There is a lot to learn and think about for those new to web development and web hosting, but don’t worry! In this article, we’ll cover what exactly a domain name is and how it works. We’ll also explain many technical terms like IP addresses and DNS so, let’s start!   What is a Domain Name? Simply put, it is the address of your website. It’s what people type into the browser’s bar to visit your website. The internet is a huge network of computers connected to each other by a global network of cables so that each computer can communicate with others. But how do they identify each other? Each computer has an IP address, which is a series of numbers that identify a particular computer. An IP address looks like this: 77.294.66.1 An IP address is difficult to remember; imagine if you had to remember each website’s IP to visit it! So, domain names were invented to solve this problem, instead of typing a long string of numbers to visit a website, you just type a domain name in your browser to visit the website.  By the way, you can purchase/register a domain through a domain registrar or a hosting provider.   How Do Domain Names work? Let’s take a look at what happens when you type a domain name in your browser to understand how it work: When you enter a domain name in your browser, it sends a request to a global network of servers that form the DNS . These servers lookup for something called “ the name servers” associated with the domain you entered and forward the request to those name servers.   What are these Name Servers? For example, if your website host is HOSTILICA, then its name servers will be like this: ns1.hostilica.net ns2.hostilica.net These name servers are computers managed by your hosting company, they will forward your request to the computer where your website files/data is stored. This computer is called a web server, and it has special software installed (Apache is a popular web server software). At this moment, the server fetches the web page that you requested and sends it back to the browser.   Final Thoughts As you can see, a domain name is simply an address of a computer that stores a particular website. By now, you know how they work and why they were invented. If you want to go further on this topic, you can read our guide on how to choose the right domain for your business, and you can also explore more about the most popular extension “ the .COM “. Enjoy reading!

An introduction to Domains First of all, the domain name is divided into two parts, let’s take ‘hostilica.com’ as an example. The first part is called the second-level domain (SLD) which is ‘Hostilica’ in our example. The second part is called the top-level domain (TLD) which is ‘.com’ in our example. Every domain name must have these two parts, we’ll focus on the top-level domain (TLD) in this article, and in case you need to go further about How to choose the right domain name for your business, you will find a Complete Guide here.   A Brief History and the Origins of TLDs The original top-level domains were developed in 1980, and they were only just six of them, with a unique purpose for each TLD of them. We will expose to you top level domains examples.  The original TLD list: .com  for ‘Commercial’ .org  for ‘Organization’ .net  for ‘Network’ .edu  for ‘Education’ .gov  for ‘Government’ .mil  for ‘Military’ But nowadays, there are no restrictions on the meanings of the top-level domains and are used in many different ways. Generic top-level domains: Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are used for general purposes, and the most common (gTLDs) are .com, .info, .net, and .org. Country code TLDs and GeoTLD: The country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and the Geographic top-level domains (GeoTLD or GTLD) are used to identify a geographic location associated with your domain. ccTLD like .US, .DE, .CA, and so on. GeoTLD like .ASIA, .AFRICA, .NYC, and so on. The main difference between them is the ccTLD represents a country such as US for the United States, but the GeoTLD represents a specific geographical location or continent such as.ASIA to represent the Continent of Asia.   What About the New TLDs?  In 2014, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) introduced the new gTLD program to increase the number of top-level domains by enabling people to submit applications for new extensions. Since then, ICANN received over 2000 TLD requests and ended up adding up to 1300 new TLD. If the application was accepted, then the TLD was added to the internet with general availability for everyone to use. Some companies applied to brand TLD extensions, such as .BMW, .GOOGLE, and .BARCLAYS. Also, the new gTLDs included some internationalized domain extensions which are in different languages other than English, including Chinese, Russian, and Arabic.  Some examples of the new TLDs are: .tech  for tech companies .biz  might be wonderful for businesses .club  with over a million registrations .live, .music, .photography  for creative industries .shop  for online stores   Are you Interested in the New TLDs? You can search for your dream domain, and register a new one with the available new TLDs from here, enjoy the search journey of your new significant domain.