If you are deciding on a domain name here are some things to keep in mind. First, keep the domain short. There have been discussions on the net that suggest a long domain name with keywords might help in your search engine ranking. Although, having your keywords in your domain name is important, if your domain name is too long, you risk losing a ton of repeat visitors who will never remember your web address. So keep it short and specific to your site's content.

You may be able to order the domain through your web host. Be careful though, it might cost you more money to do it that way. They might even say it's free, but then charge you more for it the next year than a registrar would. One thing to keep in mind too, is that it can be a little easier to move to another web host if necessary if you have your domain registered with a reputable registrar.

Prices for domains have never been lower. Originally costing 20-30 bucks a year, you can now get a domain usually for around $8-$10 per year. Recently, Yahoo ran a special for domains less than $4 per year.

Have you ever wondered what .com or .TV stands for? Well .com stands for commercial. It's basically used for businesses. TV is the country code extension for Tuvalu. That's right it's not for the box in your living room, although I've seen a lot of television related sites use that extension. No, I don't know where Tuvalu is.

The .net extension stands for Network, .biz stands for business, and the .US extension is for anyone living in or doing business in the United States. There are a lot of extensions that represent countries or territories you may have never heard of like .WS is from Samoa, and does not stand for Web-Site. The .FM extension is for Federated States of Micronesia.

One other important thing you need to know when moving your domain from one web host to another is the Nameserver addresses of your new web host. Usually, they look something like this

NS1.MYHOST.COM
NS2.MYHOST.COM

Your domain registrar should have a place on your control panel to change the information to your current web host. Once this is done it can take up to 48 hours for the site to change over to the new web host, but I've seen the address change become effective in as little as 10 minutes.

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