One of the most vital preconditions for building a successful online presence is the domain name. It is what people will see first when they chance upon your web page and what they will identify you with. The domain name should be easy to memorize, but should also be something that tells your web page's visitors what the web page is about.
A domain name as a rule is composed of two components - a Top-Level Domain (TLD) and a Second-Level Domain (SLD). If you have domain.com, for instance, ".com" is the TLD and "domain" is the Second-Level Domain. There are several sets of Top-Level Domain Names that you should examine prior to selecting the domain you want. Your decision should be built upon the goal of your website and on its target audience. Let's analyze the gTLDs, or generic TLDs - these are the most typical Top-Level Domains intended to designate a specific function - .com (business organizations), .net (network infrastructures), .biz (companies), .info (informational sites), .org (organizations), .mobi (handheld devices), .asia (the Asia-Pacific region), .name (persons or relatives), .pro (certain professions), etc. As you can perceive, these Top-Level Domain Names cover most fields of life, so you should choose the one that would explain the objective of your website best. There is no restriction as to who can register such domain names, but some of them involve extra steps to show that you are eligible to register such a domain (.mobi and .pro, for example).
The ccTLDs, or country-code TLDs, are country-specific TLDs. Each country has its own ccTLD. Choosing such a TLD is good if your target group of website visitors is from a given country. Many guys would sooner purchase commodities or services from a local web site, and if your aim is Canada, for instance, getting a .ca TLD could boost the visits to your web site.
You can register a bunch of TLDs, which can send your web page's visitors to a given site like domain.com, for example. This would increase the traffic and decrease the risk of somebody stealing your site visitors by using the same SLD with a different Top-Level Domain Name - if you are not using a trademark.
Every domain name has domain records. The name server records (NS records, also known as DNS records) disclose where the domain is hosted, i.e. they point to the hosting vendor whose name servers (NSs, aka DNSs) it is using at present. You can swap the NSs of your domain whenever you wish. You can have your domain name registered with one provider and get the web page hosting service itself from another. In this way, if you register your domain name and detect decent shared website hosting solutions somewhere else later, you can point your domain to the present company's NSs at once.
In general, as long as your domain name utilizes a certain pair of name servers, all its DNS records will point to the same webspace hosting firm. Some web hosting companies, though, enable you to modify specific DNS records, like the A records and the MX records of your domain name. The A record is an IP address, which specifies on which web server your web page is hosted, while the MX records indicate which web server tackles the e-mail addresses associated with your domain name. For example, if you appoint a new website designer and he build an .ASP web site that will be hosted on his own Windows web server, you may desire to alter just the Internet Protocol address (the A record) but not the MX records of your domain name. So, www.domain.com will point to the Windows web server, but your electronic mails or any sub-domains such as forum.domain.com or shop.domain.com will still be in your present Linux web page hosting account. The .ASP environment is developed by Microsoft and demands a Windows web hosting server, although a Linux web hosting server would be far more reliable.
Just a few site hosting vendors enable you to modify specific domain name records and quite often this an additional paid service. With NTC Hosting, you have a vast assortment of Top-Level Domain Names to select from and you can modify all domain name records or forward the domain names through a redirection tool at no extra charge. Because of that, 'NTC Hosting' would be your finest choice when it comes to handling your domain name and to setting up a successful presence on the World Wide Web.