The Basics -
First of all, welcome to the world of domaining! On
this page I will cover some of the most basic points to
domaining. First and foremost, people always want to
know if they "Own" the domain they purchase. The
answer is Yes, you own your domain name, but only for a
certain amount of time you register it for. If you
register the domain for two years, you will own your domain
for two years. Domains are owned by you, but ICANN
(the company who has the legal rights to distribute domain
names) can take them away from you if you break the law or
provide false information upon registration. For
example, websites that mislead viewers to pornographic
websites are illegal according to the Truth in Domains act
and can result in your domain being suspended.
Another question that new domainers always want to know
is whether they can renew their domain at any time.
Yes, you can renew your domain any time before it expires
and it will be yours through what you pay for. The
only way you can lose a domain is to let the domain expire.
Once you do that, anyone can grab it. Up until the
domain expires, no one can touch it. Many first time
domainers are unaware that their private information is
available to the public when they register a domain.
ICANN requires you to put your full name, address, email and
billing info when you register a domain name. Failing
to put the right private information can lead to the locking
of your domain until you fix it. In severe cases they
can simply delete your domain name. If you do not want
to have your public information available, you should buy
whois protection from a domain registrar. This makes
the private information the domain company's address instead
of yours. You can look up who owns a domain by using
what domainers call a "whois". It literally stands for
Who Is. Websites such as
whois.net will show you
who the domain belongs to. Websites such as
Godaddy.com and Namecheap.com offer whois protection for a
small fee (between $0-$10).
People often ask who can register domains. For
example, do you have to be an organization to register a
.org website? The answer is no. There is little
restrictions as to who can register what tld (.com, .net
etc). The major exception to that is country code tlds.
These are tlds like .fr (france), .asia (asia). Many
country code tld's require you to be a citizen of that
country in order to register the domain. The other two
exceptions that are common are .edu and .gov. Neither
of these tlds are available to the public. To make a
long answer short, anyone can register .com, .net, .org,
.info, .biz, .me, .tv etc. People
always ask me why is there a charge for domain names.
The reason that there is a charge is because if there was no
charge, everyone would take every tld and thus no one would
be able to register a domain anymore. Another reason
is because ICANN needs some money in order to operate and
continue enforcing the domain restrictions. In order
to do this, they charge registrars a large chunk of the
money of the domain registration. Sites that sell
domains for $3.00 are losing money since ICANN charges more
than that per domain. Thus, registering a domain at a
website that has a low price should always raise a high
alert to the customer that something is strange. |
