Domain Names Room

By Mark Shin

Are you worried about your privacy online when starting a website? You should be. When you register domain names - free privacy settings from your registrar can protect you from spam, prying eyes, or worse.

What's the problem?

• You have to give your real contact information when you register a domain name. This includes your full name, mailing address, telephone number and email address.
• Your contact information is publicly listed as the contact for your domain name. Your name and personal information is published in the WHOIS database which can be searched by anybody using free web tools.
• Your contact information can be harvested by marketing companies for telemarketing and spam email.
• If you run a website that deals with controversial issues, your personal information is easily accessible to disgruntled visitors who want to take action.
• Worse case scenario - your contact information helps build an online picture of you for identity theft.
  

Don't get us wrong. Listing contact information in the WHOIS database isn't necessarily a bad thing.

• Law enforcement officials can use the information to fight crime.
• Consumers can use the contact information to fight fraud.
• Corporations can use the contact information to fight trademark infringement.
  

What's the solution? Domain Name Privacy Registration.

Chances are you're not doing something evil with your domain name. Free privacy options from your registrar can help protect your privacy.

• Instead of publishing your contact information in the WHOIS database, your registrar lists their company name, address, telephone numbers, and email.
• You still retain full rights and ownership of the domain name, but this way, your contact information isn't obvious.
• A good registrar will offer free privacy when you register the domain name. Other companies can charge anywhere from an additional $6.99 per year and up.
  

What's the catch? Domain name privacy isn't perfect.

• You're hiding your privacy behind your registrar's contact information. Your privacy is only as strong as your registrar's will to keep your contact information private.
• Domain Name Privacy will protect you from prying eyes and spam harvesting, but it won't hide you from the law.

If you're ready to register domain names, we're here to help at http://domainnames.webdiggin.com where you'll find this information and everything else you need to know in order to find information about absolutely free domain names.

By Mark Shin

There are several sites on the internet claiming to offer the cheapest domain names. If you look hard enough, you can find domain names for as low as $1.99 or $2.99 per year. So, what's the catch?

You have to realize that not all domain names are created equally. And, not all domain registrars include the same services in the price of your domain name. A good .com domain name will cost around $10 per year and should include at the very least,

1. free domain forwarding
2. free personalized email addresses & alias forwarding
3. free parking
4. full DNS access
5. free domain registration privacy

When you buy a cheap domain name for $1.99 you're cutting out some of those services. Depending on your needs, that might be okay, but if you want to actually use your domain name for your website, make sure to read the fine print...

Here are some of the tricks that registrars use when they offer their "cheapest domain names" promotion. Even the big companies do it.

• Bait and switch. GoDaddy offers domain names for as low as $2.99 but they're for the .info domain name. Chances are you want a .com domain name which costs $9.99 per year.
• The special discount price only applies to the first year. Yahoo recently sold .com domain names in March for $1.99 but the special price was only for the first year and for new customers. It would switch to $9.95 per year after the first year.
• You only get the $1.99 domain name rate if you also buy a non-domain name product (Limit of 1 domain name). A non-domain name product usually means web hosting. Quite frankly, if you're going to pay for web hosting, find a good registrar that will give you that domain name for absolutely free.
• Two sites look awfully familiar. It's probably because one of the sites is a domain name reseller. Some entrepreneur buys domain names at wholesale cost from the big companies and then resells them to regular people like you or I.

Make sure you do your homework before registering a domain name because you can't get a refund. As always, buyer beware!

If you're ready to register domain names, we're here to help at http://domainnames.webdiggin.com where you'll find this information and everything else you need to know in order to find information about absolutely free domain names.

By Si Kabayan

Countless times I've found myself struggling to find the perfect name for a new site idea that I've been putting. Variation after variation leads me to realize that it may just be impossible to get a short and straight forward name with a dot com ending because someone has already beaten me to it. Registration sites love to offer you all of the alternative names that they have available, but when it comes down to it, adding a number of more unnecessary characters to the url can be more harm then it's worth. But as the web is expanding, more domain options have come to light and are readily available for purchase. But just like dot com and even dot net, if you don't act on it fast, you'll lose your shot at it.

In the days when www was mandatory, any site with a domain other than dot com often found themselves ignored by websurfers. Today, all that matters his how specific to your keywords the domain name is so that you can take advantage of that for search engine optimization. So these new domains actually have a fair amount of strength in comparison to abandoning your desired site name to simply have a dot com.

My most recent project actually lead me to a series of dot ws domains. All of the sites I came across has really high quality names and had excellent designs as well so I figured learning more about dot ws would be worthwhile. It turns out that dot ws refers to website and those unique designs I had come across were actually templates. What really caught my interest was that the services they offered didn't end there either!

Pulling up the products page on website.ws, the main distribution site for all dot ws domains, I was startled to find the plethora of options that they provided to their customers. Dot ws domains all appeared to include completely free hosting services, free ftp services, free url forwarding, free e-mail accounts, free SiteBuilder design, and even free technical support. I laughed as I searched for the price for all of these services as several of the hosting services I was considering using for my dot com site didn't even provide me with free e-mail addresses but as I stumbled upon the price I had to do a double take.

Somehow, website.ws has managed to offer all of these services for $10 a month, including the domain name. The lowest I could even find to compete with everything they could offer would have cost me $110 a year and that's without tools such as SiteBuilder! So for $10 more I wouldn't have to compromise with the name just to get an unfriendly dot com provider with no design help at all. If I would have purchased a dot com and hosted it myself, it would still most likely show an empty page as I am personally not the best designer and I don't currently have one that I go to. But with a dot ws domain, I would easily be able to get a fully function site up and host on the same day that I purchased it and set it up.

If you're a tech savvy individual and have somehow lucked out and landed a dot com domain name that actually identifies your site properly, you'll probably want to pass on dot ws at this point. But for everyone else, or for those who are just too tired of waiting for their site to get finished by an out sourced designer or are sick of having to deal with separate DNS and domain registration companies, you'll find this solution a lot simpler. Personally, the ability it gives me to grow with it and bring the domain with me as I expand my hosting knowledge is really welcoming in comparison to some of the gimmicks I've run across in other non dot coms before.

What sells your site is the name and the content on it, not the domain. WWW is being phased out of urls and dot coms are nearly full. Making the move and getting the name you want is the most important aspect of site registration that you will encounter.

Si Kabayan is an internet and e-commerce enthusiast. Living in the beautiful and peaceful country, Indonesia.