If you plan to do any business on the Web, you need your own domain. Many personal Web sites sport URLs like this:

http://www.isp.com/mysite/home.html

Trips right off the tongue, doesn't it?

If your Web URL is going to be memorable and easy to include in printed material, it should look more like this:

http://www.wonderfulkites.com

The name you choose for your Web site is very important. It says a lot about who you are and what you do. What you call your Web site depends on several things:

• Your audience
• What information you want to convey, or what you sell
• Which domain names are available

To get the domain name you want for your site, you must first register it, and then let your ISP know that the domain is yours. Their techies do a little technical magic and, just like that, your site is live. Your job is to add content.

Determine Your Audience and Market

You can register as many domains as you have money to pay for, assuming that someone else has not claimed them. This means that you're going to have to spend considerable time thinking of names, and then checking to see whether they're already in use.

The first step in thinking up a name is to decide who your audience is. Is it the teen market? The business market? The sports market? After you know whom you want to reach, think about exactly what you want to market. For example, let's say you're in the sporting goods business and know your audience is sports fanatics. Let's also say you specialize in volleyballs. The next step is to come up one or more names that "sell" directly to that market. You have several choices:

• Come up with a name, such as www.volleyballs.com, that's an exact match to your market. The value of this approach is that your domain name is the same name as the market. It's easy to remember and, more than likely, the first word someone will type into a search engine when searching for volleyballs.

Unfortunately, given the proliferation of Web sites, most simple and easy-to-remember domain names are no longer available.

• Choose a domain name that's similar to the name of your company, but that complies with the rules for domain names. For example, if your company is ABC Volleyballs, Inc., you might register abcvolleyballs.com to use for your site.
• Get radical. Try a name that's so unusual sounding that it gets noticed right away. For example, www.monster.com does not sell monsters -- it's a job search service. The www.google.com Web site is a search engine, and www.amazon.com is based in Seattle, which is nowhere near Brazil.

Whether you go conservative or highly creative, there are a few hard and fast rules you need to follow when choosing a domain name.

Know the Domain Name Rules

There are certain restrictions on which characters and how many characters can be in a domain name. In addition, certain types of domains have restrictions or recommendations (rules that aren't mandatory) on who can register them. Here are the most common rules:

• Use only letters, numbers, or hyphens (-)
• The URL cannot begin or end with a hyphen
• It must have less than 63 characters, not including .com, .net, and .org
• .com domains are for commercial and personal sites
• .net domains are recommended for companies involved in Internet infrastructure (such as ISPs)
• .org domains are recommended for not-for-profit organizations

Other domain types include .gov (government), .edu (education), and a plethora of foreign country abbreviations (uk, .jp, .au, and .ca). To register some of these types of domains (such as .gov and .edu), you have to actually prove that you're an educational or governmental institution. For .net, .com, .org, and the newer domains (such as .biz, .info, and .name), you only need to pay the fee to register.

Make a list of potential domain name candidates and ask your friends or family their opinions on each. When you get it narrowed down to two or three top choices, you're ready to figure out if they're available.

Find Your Perfect Domain

The best way to search for a great name for your Web site is to spend a few minutes searching one of the domain registry sites to make sure your great name hasn't already been taken.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is charged with collecting fees and keeping track of who owns what domain on the Internet. One of ICANN's functions is to accredit domain name registrars, but there are many places where you can register that all-important name. Network Solutions, shown in Figure 4-2, is a good first place to go to find out which domain names are available. The site provides a nifty search tool -- Find A Domain -- that takes some of the pain out of searching for an available and appropriate name.

However, it pays to shop around, as Network Solutions is not the least expensive option available for domain registration.

Figure 4-2: NetworkSolutions.com is one of the ICANN accredited registrars.

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Let's give it a try. Go to the Network Solutions Web site and type wonderfulkites in the Find a Domain text box. Notice the check boxes for selecting the type of domain you want. You can check as many of these as you like. There's no law or rule preventing commercial use of .org or the use of .tv by a Web site that isn't based in Tuvalu.

Make sure .com is checked, at a minimum, and then click Search. The result appears in Figure 4-3, and you're in luck! This name is available in a number of domains, including .com, .net, and .biz. If you had found your domain name to be taken, you just search for your second choice, and then your third, and so on, until you find a name that's available.

Figure 4-3: Use Network Solutions to determine if your desired domain name is available.

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If you're stubborn and you want your name and you want it bad, you can try tracking down the current owner of the domain name and find out if the name is for sale. Many Internet domain names are even auctioned. Sometimes, if you have a great name, people come right to you.

To find out who owns a particular name, use the Internet WHOIS service. You can surf to this Web site directly from the Network Solutions site -- a link to WHOIS appears on the bottom navigation bar. Enter the entire domain name, including the "www" portion -- for example, www.kites.com. You get the name and address of the owner and the rest is just business as usual.

If you're stumped as to which domain to register, or if you're just bored, go to DeletedDomains.com, where they keep track of all the domain names that people once registered but have allowed to expire.

Once you have a domain selected and registered, you'll want to upload your Web pages to the site. In the next section, you'll learn how to use FTP to populate your new site.