Choosing a name

There's a lot to think about when you are deciding on the name for your website. You probably have some ideas already and the first thing you may find is that your treasured first choice name is already taken...and the second...and the third... You may well have a long night ahead of you! Here are some things to think about along the way:

The longer the name is, the more chances people have to type it wrongly. The same thing goes for names with lots of dashes splitting up the words.

A name which incorporates real words can be easier to remember than initials. Which would you remember more easily - mcp.com or mycarpark.com?

Avoid common misspellings, or words that sound alike. Think about trying to tell someone your web address over the phone - do you really want to end up spelling it all out every time?

Don't feel that you have to incorporate your product or service into the website name. It won't necessarily help you. Sometimes building a brand can be much more important. The classic example is Google which is now indelibly associated with search engines despite having no clues whatever in the name.

Always type a name you have thought up into a search engine and check the top results for unfortunate associations. It's not going to look too good if people looking for you find similarly named enterprises from quite another field. For example, one name I tried was very close to that of a well-known London pole dancer... not quite the business image I was trying to create!

.com or .co uk ?

"All the big companies have .com addresses, so a .com address will make my company look big too. It also costs more so it must be worth more to me". Sounds familiar? It makes sense until you realise that the .com extension is an American extension, so if you are based in the UK you have to be very careful that you are not hiding your site away from the UK search engines and from your UK audience.

In practice, a .com address will show up fine on UK searches so long as the server it is hosted on is UK-based. If you are not sure, ask your hosting provider and move if necessary. A .co.uk address is a lot cheaper and has the advantage, if you are locally-based, of letting everyone know where you are in the world. If you are an organisation rather than a business, .org.uk makes sense for you.

You may find an address where the .co.uk or .org.uk domain name is available, but the .com name has been taken. Always go and check what sort of sites are using the other domain names. If one belongs to an already-established business that is similar to yours, you may well be heading for trouble!

Who do I choose to register my name with?

There are many, many companies who are very eager to take your money! So here are some quick tips:

You will encounter huge variations in price. In the UK , you should be paying well under £10 for a .co.uk name for 2 years and under £25 for a .com one. Don't pay more - unless the deal includes hosting.

Beware of the companies that say "Let us do everything for you..!" These are the ones who tend to tie you in to packages that are difficult to extract yourself from without spending more cash. Instead, look for ones that offer you free control panels and, above all, free name server changes. Even if you have no intention of changing anything yourself, your web designer will thank you for it, believe me! If you can change name servers yourself, you can change where your site is hosted without penalty.

What is hosting and what are the pitfalls?

You've bought the name, but that is just the first step. You also need some web space where your site will reside. This does not need to be with the company that provided your domain name. Your web designer may well offer you a good deal with site maintenance thrown in. The main things to check with your hosting company are:

• quality of support - if you have problems you need to get them fixed asap
• ability to upgrade - if you need more bandwidth, more space or extra facilities, you need it set up straight away
• UK-based servers - if you have a .com name but want UK customers this is absolutely vital

Congratulations! With a good domain name and some quality hosting, you can get straight down to designing the site - or can you? First of all it's worth thinking long and hard about:

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