A domain name is crucial in maintaining simplicity and consistency of a company's communication effort. Both the web service and e-mail communication can be merged to create uniformity and simplicity. For instance all employees of Google could have their e-mail addresses start in a uniform manner. (name@google.com). An employee whose name is Larry will therefore have his e-mail as larry@google.com. In most cases the domain name is the name of your business and is used to register your web presence.

A good domain name should be easy to remember and also unique. It pays a lot to take some time to choose a domain name that stands above the rest. This will assist in marketing your company to your target audience. A domain name is registered and owned for a period of one year after which it can be renewed.

Domain registration is done at a fee and there are two key factors that you should take into consideration. The registrant and the domain administrator. The former owns the domain name while the latter manages changes that may subsequently be made to the domain.

Buying a domain is another very critical area. There are a number of companies that register and sell domain names. Whether you are an individual or corporate organization then you will find a name that is suited for you. While purchasing a domain name, you can also opt for the additional service of hosting that comes at an extra cost. The overall cost of registration is largely dependent on the amount of time in which you wish buy the domain.

A domain name can be used spell out which business you are engaged in and the location. This is commonly known as domain extension. For example the dot com domain is largely used by profit oriented organizations while .org is widely used by charitable organizations. Most domains used by the government end with .gov while universities and other learning organizations use the .edu domain.

To cut on costs, you can settle for free domains that are provided by major companies such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo among others. These secondary domains are called sub-domains.

A website does not automatically get online. You will have to find a web hosting service that will ensure that your website goes live and can be searched by users all over the world. Web hosting also comes at an additional cost and it is paid at various intervals depending on the company that is hosting your site. It can be paid monthly, quarterly or even after one year. Web hosting can be also be done free but this comes with its fair share of restrictions, terms and conditions and may not be worth pursuing.

Website Costs Parameters

Finally you have decided to build a website and join the web world. Now, you'll have to make valuable judgments on the money involved. This article will guide you through the cost involved to build website.

Website costs will include:

1. Computer Equipment: To develop a website you'll need equipment like computers and other electronic gadgets. I can hear you say that you already have them. If that's the case, do go for upgrading the computer before moving to design the website. For, you wouldn't want the designer complain of outdated software in your web site.

2. Design: Even if you know bits and pieces of design, it is better to go for a professional web designer to get an impressive site. However, you can work closely with the designer and he'll include the features you ask for. Some clever web designers may charge additional charges for graphics. Beat them on it. Clarify and include the services charges and settle for prices which are all-inclusive.

3. Content: You'll need to calculate the cost on content and content management. The content should be rich in keywords and keyword phrases. Good keywords will help in getting visitors to your site through search engines. You must be thinking of a good Thesaurus. Don't - go for a professional content developer. He would be able to make the content valuable, interesting and give the right keywords. If you pause and think-the web site costs will be a lot lesser if a content developer is employed as the revenues would be more.

4. Web site maintenance: You'll also have to consider the cost of the web site maintenance while calculating web site costs. Websites will have to be updated regularly to attract visitors to the site. Surely, you wouldn't want a website which looks the same all the time. So, it would be wise to hire a web designer to update the site on hourly basis.

5. Advertising: There is no use in having a site if nobody visits it. Spending money on advertising helps in increasing the revenue. Calculate the cost for a high rank in the search engine. And, don't stop with the calculations; do pay for the high rank in search engines and directories. Professional will help you register the site in various search engines and directories. Thus your website will appear in the very first page of the search.

6. Domain names: Domain names are very important. Are you asking me why? Well, it's through domain names that people identify your website. Select a name which reflects your business. For example a name like- books for sale.com will attract people who want to buy books. The domain name should be as short as possible. Professional web designers will be able to buy domain names for you. It is also possible to buy more than one domain name but it's better to stick to one to reduce costs.

Hosting

Hosting is exclusively different parameter which takes care of all the above parameters and which needs to be taken care of properly.

The HTNL code of your website is placed on the internet server. In simple terms, Commercial hosting companies store this code for a fee called hosting fee. Check out the rates of different hosting companies before registering the code.

Spend time and look out for the best bargain available. Having said that, do not settle for some features based on the cost factor alone. The cheapest may not be the best. So do extensive research before building a web site.

Now that we’ve covered making your page URL sound professional, we can focus on the actual content.

First of all, there are 2 options- the easy page builder and the HTML mode. I would recommend the easy site builder, especially to beginners, because you can always upgrade to HTML mode later, whereas if you start off with HTML mode, you can’t go back down to the easy page builder. The HTML mode is only for people who know HTML, and who can write a webpage code from scratch. If that’s not you, then go for the page builder. You won’t need any knowledge whatsoever of HTML. This is a lot like a blog template which you can pick out, except it’s not a blog!

Freewebs offers many gadgets for your site, like web polls, web forms, tag/chat boxes, hit counters etc. I personally love the web forms. They’re so professional!

I really hope this guide provided you with enough info to start up a webpage! Good Luck!

It was because of DNS Propagation.
So what is DNS propagation?

Once you make changes to your domain with the registrar you purchased your domain from, the changes will take anywhere from 5 minutes to 72 hours for propagation to occur depending on your ISP and how often they update the DNS records.

Domain propagation is the process of your registrar handing off the changes of your domain to root DNS servers, ISPs acquire records from the root servers, ISPs to other ISPs and so on until you see the changes reflect on your computer with your internet service provider. Some service providers update their records more often than others and receive changes faster. As a result of this, often you will not be able to get to your website by its' domain name but a friend can. Simply wait out until the changes propagate to your ISP.

My blog was down yesterday and the night before. I wanted to change the IP address of my domain. Gitui.com. After about 48 hours I gave up and chaged it back to the old IP address, and it worked fine. Because of that I knew that the DNS propagation was not even started. Because all the records still pointed to the old IP address.

That is briefly what  DNS/Domain Propagation is. It will affect your site and all your emails.

An application called Instant Messenger (IM) has attracted more and more attentions from the internet users around the world lately. It is said that IM has provided them a brilliant platform to communicate using PC with a relatively lower cost as compared to other medium of communications. Anyone can use IM regardless where he or she came from. The borderless form of communication has enabled a close relationship emerging between friend, relative, family member, and even entrepreneur to deliver their messages instantly and effectively. Some of the IM platforms even allow for using video and sound instead of the text itself.

Below I listed some of the services provided by the IM that are used extensively anywhere and anytime by the internet users.

AOL Instant Messenger

AOL became the most well-known IM ten years ago. Its popularity particularly dealing with its excellent services has successfully attracted many users which later leading the company to release stand-alone official AIM client called AOL Instant Messenger or AIM. AIM uses TOC protocol and OSCAR instant messaging protocol which was released by AOL on May, 1997 and it permits registered users to communicate in real time. The new version was specifically designed for WindowXP to enable the internet users to use video and sound, sharing files and other attractive features which are added from time to time.

AIM is always regarded as the most popular method of sending instant message as it has the largest group of registered users as compared to other IM interfaces listed here. Indeed, it is a user-friendly tool that is easily manipulated by the users to communicate with each other. AOL also offers an AIM client software which can be used for Mac OS X, Mac Os, and Linus.

Yahoo Messenger

The application of Yahoo Messenger enables its users to communicate each other by using the provided current Yahoo ID to sign in. It comes with an attractive emoticon, direct communication via video, fail transfer and so forth. Its front page appears to be more attractive as compared to other IM platforms but its users are lesser than AOL. It is a user-friendly communication tool and thus it is more appropriate to be recommended for a newbie who wishes to communicate friends, relative and family members.

The interesting feature of Yahoo Messenger is that the users are allowed to share photos easily and effectively. Instead, you can choose the theme to indicate your mood or feeling via its excellent feature called IMVironments. Indeed, it is the best IM client and hence it is worth using it. Its new version, Version 8, comes with the added Voice to make the communication sounds more attractive and impressive. This version also enables the users to include “Widgets” into the new messenger. With this added feature, you can exchange message with other users who use MSN Messenger and Window Live.

Google Talk

Google is the search engine favored by the most internet users as compared to Yahoo, Ask, Netscape and other search engine sites. Google provides its web-based application for instant messaging and voice over internet (VOIP) called Google Talk or simply known as Gtalk. Gtalk enables its users to make calls instantly and effectively without paying a single cent. It also allows the communication of other XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) clients with Google Talk users with its open protocol, XMPP. Now, BlackBerry is available to use within Google Talk which can be downloaded at Google Talk's blackberry. There is also an Add Friend button, a “Search all contacts” field to enable searches in both Google Talk and Gmail contacts.

Google has made the communication more convenient by introducing Google Apps Team addition to enable talks among co-workers or classmates taken place in a friendly environment. With this add-in application, anyone can obtain Google Docs to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. As Google Apps Team addition recognizes the connections to co-worker or classmates effectively, their contacts will automatically be added in your contact list. To try this, try visit Google Apps Team Addition Homepage.

Google Talk is a good platform to choose for an instant messaging and open communication as it can be used for many languages. To do this, you just add any of the 23 other translation bots. They are all named by two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. So, French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

On June 4, 2008, Google has added many other languages with the aims to reduce the language barriers with automated chat translations many people have been experiencing. The new bots speak Bulgarian (bg), Croatian (hr), Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi), Hindi (hi), Norwegian (no), Polish (pl), Portuguese (pt), Romanian (ro), Swedish (sv) and Traditional Chinese (zh-hant). Basically, there are 26 new bots: bg2en, cs2en, da2en, en2bg, en2cs, en2da, en2fi, en2hi, en2hr, en2no, en2pl, en2pt, en2ro, en2sv, en2zh-hant, fi2en, hi2en, hr2en, no2en, pl2en, pt2en, ro2en, sv2en, zh-hant2en, zh-hant2zh, and zh2zh-hant. To check out the full list of supported languages, simply log in to supported language combinations.

ICQ

ICQ is an instant messaging commonly called “I seek you” which is regarded as a stand-alone IM client since it was first released in November, 1996. It was also the first to have features like “Buddy” and an interactive communication platform. This application has become portion of family AOL Time Warner, but unfortunately it is not advertised extensively like AIM. It is an application compatible with the PC operation of OS which includes cell phone and Symbian OS. That is why it is not surprising to find that its usage is growing.

ICQ provides many excellent features which make it stands firmly among other IM platforms. It has marvelous features include spelling checker, file transfer, “Push to talk” (PTT) service, video messaging and e-mail integration. Not only ICQ let you communicate with friends and colleagues in real time, but also you can play many online games to entertain yourself. ICQ is definitely the best choice for anyone who wishes to search for an attractive and entertaining IM platform.

MSN

Like other leading websites, Microsoft provides its excellent IM plug-in known as MSN Messenger. If you wish to use the services provided by MSN Messenger, you should first have a registered Hotmail to access this type of IM platform. It offers many interesting features such as video messaging, voice communication, emotion icons and many more.

MSN Messenger also comes with a facility to enable you to search via IM to obtain your desired findings. That means you can use it as a web search without opening another window. This feature is very unique as it is not available at other IM clients. MSN is an ideal web-search and IM interface for entrepreneurs, organizations, institutions, administrative and the home users as well. The other amazing feature is that you can leave a message or send a note even you are offline. Despite a large number of people are engaging with PC Windows every day, it is undeniably that this platform has improved the searches, instant messaging and real-time communication in a wide coverage.

Jabber

Jabber is an excellent XML-based protocol to enable real-time instant messaging for e-business. The protocol is added to include Voice over IP and file transfer signaling. It is unique that it integrates the existing e-business into a more personal and dynamic environment. Despite of this excellent feature, Jabber has enabled the communication with other IM platforms to be taken place at the same time with AIM and MSN. Nevertheless, it is not suitable for a newbie who is not familiar with the interface of IM. Once you have familiar with Jabber, it could be a marvelous tool used specifically for an extensible messaging and presence information (buddy lists). Unlike other IM clients, Jabber is an open system that requires its users to use their domain name and a suitable Internet connection to access the server and to talk to users from other IM platforms like Google Talk, Pidgin, Miranda IM, Gizmo Project, Psi and iChat as well.

iChat

iChat is an AIM client by Apple Inc. that allows users to integrate MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk contacts into the Jabber pane. This client provides an excellent facility to enable its users to communicate with either users from Mac, AIM or Jabber. With its new features of video backdrops, Photo Booth effects, Keynote presentation and photo slideshows making iChat a fun and live on-line messaging tool to connect people around the world.

The most unique feature of iChat is that it enables a full-screen personal video conference over thousand miles away via any type of broadband connections. Besides that, an application of iChat provides an interesting client to be integrated with OS X. Therefore, Mac users who are using AIM should give iChat a try.

First of all you need to decide what your site will be called before you can purchase your domain name (yourname.com/net/org).Choosing the right domain name for your site is much more important than you might think.

For example: A person wants to start a website about cooking recipes and or services. So it goes without saying that it's really a good idea to sit and think about how people will find this person's site. If someone was looking for recipes they would go to Google or Yahoo or some search engine and they would type “recipes” or “cooking services” or some cooking related keywords or phrases.

Some people are tempted to name their domains after their business or personal names and register a domain like AB-Enterprises.com. If you want people to find you through search engines then this wouldn't be a good name for your domain, would it?

However, if you want many people to find your site when they go to Google or any of the search engines, then I would recommend that you get a domain name that contains some of the keywords that you'd like to be found with.

I made this same mistake with my very first site and really had to learn the hard way. It was a blog about shopping and I named it after my nick name. And of course no one is going to find my site by searching for my nick name now, are they? They'd only find me by searching for what they need. "Shopping", "shopping advice", etc. So instead of using a site with my name, I should have used something like shoppingtips.com or something similar to that.

Many of the search engines really put lots of emphasis on your domain name when they display their search results, so it's important to include your keywords within if possible.

So using the above given example of the person that wants to create a site about cooking services, a good domain for this person would be "cookingservices.com" or "recipesforyou.com" (assuming that's what their site will be about).

So just remember this one important tip; that your domain name should ALWAYS reflect the theme of your web site if you want searchers to find you. Domain names aren't everything or the only thing when it comes to getting found on the web, but they sure help when they describe the content of your site.

1. DicksOnWeb.com (Dickson Web)

   This is an example of a purely honest mistake. Dickson Web is a website used for data loggers and chart recorders; however their domain name is misleading. As suspected, they have finally caught on to the words within the domain that give it its misleading message. They now only use this as a link to redirect to their new domain name.

2. ChoosesPain.com (Choose Spain)

   Choose Spain. This is a hotel and a realty site for Spain. Hopefully your vacation isn't as painful as the domain. They do however have some pretty nice land for sale and hotels for rent there.

3. ViagraFix.com (Via Grafix)

   This has been around for a while. It was a rather innocent name until Viagra came out. They have "graphix" tutorial cd's and a bunch of other items related to computer graphics. The company no longer uses this as their domain.

4. TeacherStalk.com (Teachers Talk)

   This is a community for teachers and students from across the US to talk about just about anything. It just turns out that by moving the "s" it turns into teacher stalk.

5. WinterSexPress.com (Winter's Express)

   This is a small town's local newspaper. They are called the “Winter Express”, but the domain can make it appear to be a different type of site. The paper is for Winters, California.

6. NYCAnal.com (NY Canal)

   This is a travel information website with links to all sorts of different activities to do on the canals of New York. This is a general website mistake. If you were to start a business on the Cook Islands, you would end up with .co.ck at the end of your domain. Co is the standard for commercial domains, and .ck is the TLD for the Cook Islands, so either way you will end up with the .co.ck after any innocent sounding domain name.

7. WhorePresents.com (Who Represents)

   This is actually a database for contacting the lawyer and/or publicists of some of the biggest actors and actresses out there. Whether or not this actually puts you in contact with the people it claims is beside the point, still somehow, the domain fits for at least some of the people on the database.

8. ExpertSexChange.com (Experts Exchange)

   This is a site where Experts can exchange their ideas. It is actually for programmers to get help with their current projects, and yet it makes it sound like it's advertising the best “sex change” company out there. Since then, for some reason, they've changed their domain.

9. TheRapistFinder.com (Therapist Finder)

   This is actually a database for you to find a therapist. I thought this was the best of them all, as even without the caps you would probably read it as it sounds. This site is actually pretty big and could really help you find the best therapists in your area.

Hopefully this list will make you think twice before registering your next domain name. If you've seen another strange domain name other than the ones here, please feel free to share them with me in the comments.

Internet domain extensions are similar but serve a slightly different function. In a perfect world, these extensions would always represent exactly what they were designed to do. However, with many people trying to hide various types of sites behind innocuous names, the meanings sometimes get corrupted. As a general rule, the extension do portray the intent of the website fairly accurately.

Websites that use the .edu extension are intended to be utilized by schools. This includes public and private schools, colleges and universities, and trade or technical schools. Knowing this can come in handy if you are trying to decide what the extension is for the site you want to visit. Always try the most obvious one first. It will be right most of the time. Sometimes a school will use a different extension for a second or third website with another purpose other than to promote the school or convey information to the students.

When you see a site have .biz following the web name, it will normally be some type of business. Frequently, the .biz is used more for companies that are smaller and more internet based. The idea here is that .biz sounds more upbeat and today than the old .com. A lot of web entrepreneurs like to use the .biz.

A site with .info as its suffix will almost always be an information website. This extension is not used as prevalently as some of the others. When it is employed, the site is often filled with information about a particular topic that has interest to people in a particular area of interest.

United States national, state, and local governments like to use the .gov extension. With very few exceptions, all government entities make use of this extension. It always flags a political division. The IRS, Social Security, all states, and most cities and towns have at least one .gov website. This is very handy if you know the state or city name. Many times you can just take a shot that it will be the name followed by .gov and be right. A lot of states will use some form of the abbreviated state name. If the agency is military, it will often switch from .gov to .mil. The various branches of the armed forces add this extension to their website names.

Of course, the most common extension is .com. This is considered the plum extension if a company can get it with their name in front of it. Many millions have been spent to obtain and defend domain names ending in .com. If you are an IBM or 3M corporation, this brand identity is your bread and butter. Every effort has been made over the years to insure that the special domains ending .com have ended up with the companies that already have a trade mark or copyright on the name.

If you are a not-for-profit or similar type of agency, you will most likely want to go for an extension of .org. This is the suffix of choice for churches and other benevolent institutions. While the .com would work just as well, by going with .org, any confusion over the type of company can be removed.

Every country has their own extension. They work something like this. Denmark is .de. Russia is .ru. Canada is .ca. The pattern continues. Unless you happen to be in that country, mostly these suffixes will just signal where in the world you are visiting on the internet. This is at least true of the where the website resides.

The list of extensions goes on and on. Although it is nearly impossible to cover them all in one article, this should give you a good start on understanding the reasoning behind the various extensions. By organizing your web addresses by their extensions, you will assure that in nearly every case that websites that are related will be in the same area of your list.