Deciding on a Domain name Registrar
Two important decisions to make when you set up your website is which Registrar you will register your chosen domain with and secondly the Hosting company who will host your website. In some cases the company you register your domain with and the company you host your website with might be the same company but they don't need to be.
There are a number of things to consider when choosing who to register your domain name with:
1. The Reputation and Reliability of the Registrar
2. The initial cost and renewal costs of the domain in question
3. The satisfaction or disatisfaction of present and past customers as to the service they have received
There are innumerable registrars who can be found via a search engine but here are links to Registrars I think worthy of consideration
Using your Domain name
Domain names are most commonly pointed to webspace to enable your website to be accessed. You may choose to use webspace or hosting that your Domain name Registrar provides or decide on hosting provided by another company. It is best to consider registering a Domain name and securing hosting as separate and register with the best Domain Registrar for you and obtain the best hosting for your purposes.
Domain names may be used for other purposes beside being used for websites. Some uses are as follows:
Investment
Some domains may be registered because the registrant thinks the domain name will be valuable in the future and can sell it for a premium price or a domain name may be registered for a future project that is still in the planning state. Such Domains may display Domain registrars' "Under construction" pages or be "parked" displaying advertising links which generate a small amount of income for the regsistrant or nothing may be displayed.
Web forwarding
Some domains may be configured to forward the visitor to another website. This may be done by some companies that have registered multiple domain name extensions of their chosen domain and the webforwarding forwards visitors which ever domain they have accessed to one particular domain and website.
E-Mail forwarding
This is a simple way whereby a company can register a domain name for their business, set up an e-mail address of the form sales@companyname.co.uk and have all e-mails received forwarded to a free provider with an address of the form companyname@gmail.com. This gives the company a more professional appearance than displaying a gmail address on their literature but any e-mails they send out will still bear their Gmail sender address.
E-mail accounts
Domain names can be registered purely so the company or individual can use a domain name e-mail address to send and receive e-mails. A domain name e-mail address will be of the form someone@domainname.co.uk. The Domain name needs to be configured to point at an E-mail service provider (who may also host websites) or a free e-mail provider such as GMail who offer premium services where you can use your own domain name.
Check out our webpage Deciding on a Hosting company for what to consider and the different options available when deciding on a Hosting company for your website.