With the new year rapidly approaching, you might want to finally start your blog, show off your project, or create the website of your dreams. But an important part of starting a website is selecting your domain name. A domain name is the address of your website, and it is how people will find and access your site on the internet. A good domain name can help to build trust with your audience, and can also make it easier for people to remember your website.

But you might be wondering, “Why is the domain name important?”

You will look more professional to have a domain of your own. While using subdomains (like yourdomain.wordpress.com, or yourdomain.weebly.com) may be tempting due to its low price, getting your own domain is not that expensive. Most domains start around $5-10 and increase to $12 for the next year. If you wish to make your project, blog, or other website look impressive, a domain can help with that. 

Having your own domain is also more flexible. With your own domain, you can host your own email addresses or other types of servers within the same domain. For example, you can host the email address, yourname@yourdomain.com, and be able to send and receive emails with it.

You might be wondering, what makes a good domain name?

There are 4 important factors in deciding what makes a good domain name:

Distinctiveness

Make sure that your domain has its own identity. Avoid copyrighted keywords in your domain name like Disney, iPad, Elder Scrolls, etc. Also, make sure that there aren’t similar websites out there with the same domain name, but a different TLD. A TLD or Top Level Domain is the end portion, (like .com, .org, or .net) of a web domain.

 

Relation

Make sure that your domain relates to the identity of your site. If you plan to make a website about pancakes, don’t choose something like WaffleHouseCentral.com. Instead, choose something that incorporates pancake in the name. An example I came up with is pancutecakes.com, for a website that posts cute pancake pictures.

 

Keep it short

People won’t remember a long domain name, so make sure to keep it less than two words in length. Another good way to keep your domain name short is by cutting it in half.

For example: if you choose the domain LunaLane.com, instead see if LunaLa.ne is available. If the domain isn’t available that is not a big deal, but try to shorten them as much as possible, preferably under 10 letters.

Choice Paralysis

At the end of the day you can always change your address. This can cause some people to miss your website address change, but you can announce the change at the bottom and make the old address redirect to the new one until you lose access to it. So do not worry about making sure to choose a perfect domain, instead choose something that is good and meets most, or all of these requirements.

These are not the only factors but are the important ones to consider.

Setting up your domain

Now that you have chosen a domain name, you need to register it.

To register a domain name you need to choose a domain registrar. A domain registrar is a company that redirects the name you rent from them to the server that hosts your website. Some ones I recommend include: Hover, NameCheap, and Google Names.

Some of these registrars allow you to host your website or email services with them. These may be more expensive than other options, for example, Linode. Linode makes it easy to host multiple websites for about 5$ a month. They have a one-click install for WordPress and many other types of servers that may be useful for your projects.

If you want to host your emailing services through another website, a good option would be FastMail. FastMail costs 5$ a month per user and allows you to send and receive emails. They respect privacy and don’t save any data to sell to third parties. They have their client but also allows you to use your favorite email client.

Choosing a good domain name requires some thought and planning. Consider the length, memorability, keywords, distinctive, and not already in use by another party. With little effort, you can find a domain name that will help establish your project, blog, or other types of website and help you increase your professionalism to the next level.