Cold Spring Software Design | website design, maintenance & hosting; software & database development and support for small businesses in Massachusetts

What's a good domain name?

Shorter names are better names. Ideally the short name has meaning when read as a word. The shortness of the domain name shouldn't come from omitting letters or substituting numbers of letters for words (Weasels4U.com)

.Com is still the best type of domain to have. It's what people expect to see for all sorts of business and commercial sites. .Org is for non-commercial organizations. .Net is for networks, often used in a technical sense applying to a computer network. There are other suffixes, but they are not often used:
.Biz - reserved for business
.Coop - reserved for co-operative organizations
.Info - for all type of uses
.Name - for use by individuals
.Pro - for use by professionals such as physicians and lawyers.
.Us - for use by websites in the USA
.Ws - for all types of websites

Hyphens or dashes make domain names easier to read but more difficult to type. If they're used because the non-hyphenated domain name is already taken, you're just going to send traffic to the non-hyphenated domain. The best use for hyphens is when you find a very short domain with hyphens available. Nobody is going to remember the hyphens in "small-furry-animals-in-mongolia.com"

Spell words correctly! You might find a short domain name available if it's misspelled, but again - using aaple.com is just going to send your potential customers to apple.com! When in doubt, consult dictionary.com.

Don't resort to prefixes or suffixes such as "e" or "i" or "my" in front of the domain or "site" behind it. Unless you can coin a new term such as "e-marmot", e-marmot.com is not likely to receive very much traffic (but the site is available at this time!)

Your website will be an important part of your business or organization. Whether your site is a simple brochure or the primary sales avenue for your company, the name you give it is important. The domain name you choose will be as much of an investment as the name of your business. It will be printed on business cards, advertising and packaging and will stay with you for a long time.

Cold Spring will work with you to find a domain name appropriate for your site. We'll purchase the domain, listing you as the owner and take care of all the technical requirements including yearly renewals. Our charge for this service is just $15/year.

A domain name is the Internet equivilent of your phone number. It's unique for your website and thus allows anyone in the world to located your site - that's why a web address is called a URL, a Universal Resource Locator.

When someone types your domain name into their browser, the browser requests the location of the files that make up your website from the Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS resolves your domain name into an IP address, that is the actual physical location of the computer hosting your website. That computer is a web server and, in the case of our web server, is in a secure building in Atlanta, GA. When the browser request reaches the web server, the server delivers the requested files to the browser over extremely high-speed connections. The browser then reads the files and displays them as a single page.