Your domain name is the name of your web site (www.MYDOMAIN.com).and is established through a registration process.  This registration is completely independent of the other aspects of your website such as design, hosting, support, e-mail services, etc. You do not have to acquire and register your domain name through your website provider as ANYONE can register and own a domain name. While most hosting providers can provide registration services for you (including us), we actually advise against this. Your domain name is the key to your customers finding your website, so you want to make sure you have full ownership and control over this.  In the event you ever need to change website vendors, all you need to do is point your domain name to your new website, provided you control the domain name. If you don't control it you may find yourself at the mercy of your website vendor, and could lose the brand equity built up by your domain. 

 

While we can register your domain for you and are happy to do so, this article provides the background information and knowledge you need to acquire and register a domain name on your own.

All computers and websites on the Internet are accessed through the use of their unique IP (Internet protocol) address which looks something like (192.168.255.255).  All you need to access a web site is knowledge of its IP address.  If you know it, you can the address (such as http://192.168.255.255) directly into your browser and you can connect.  However, that is not very user friendly or easy to remember. 

 

The Domain Name System (DNS) provides a way for translating textual domain names into their corresponding IP addresses.  When someone enters www.mydomain.com into their browser, the browser uses the DNS to find the corresponding IP address, and then connects to that address.  Basically the DNS is a giant cross reference table.