Website ABCs >
1) Domain Name Registration, Basic Configuration, and ICANN
One of my favorite scenes in the movie "The Jerk" with Steve Martin is when his character eagerly opens the new phone book to discover his name is listed in it -- he rejoiced because finally "he was SOMEBODY" because he could be found in a phone book - and that is exactly when the sniper in the hills starts shooting at him because his name was the one the sniper randomly picked out of the white pages to be a human target!
Domain Name Registration
So, how do you get a "domain name" ( referred to when used as website name or a URL) under your control?
Godaddy is the King of Registrars at this time
What's up with the extensions?
- Easy. You sign up for it with a "Domain Name Registrar" or with a business who is "reselling" Domain Name Registration services for a registrar.
- As of this writing on 4/23/2017, Domain Name registration seems to be running about $14/year. Basically you go to a registration website, you submit the string of characters you want to reserve along with an "extension" (.com, .net, .us, .de) and if it is available you can secure it for $14/year. Really, really simple.
Godaddy is the King of Registrars at this time
- www.godaddy.com is the most popular registrar at this time.
- While I am NOT an advocate of supporting monopolized businesses such as Godaddy, in this case, to me, there can be safety in numbers, and separating your registrar from your hosting company isn't a bad thing in my opinion. If you reserve your domain name with a smaller webhosting company as part of a web hosting package or just because you found them first, if and when you want to switch web-hosting companies, you wouldn't typically change your domain name host as those are two completely separate services, but that is confusing for the newbie to this realm. Likewise, there were issues in the early and mid 2000's with some of the smaller hosts manipulating and withholding domain name changes when a customer decided to leave their hosting solution, and if your business relied on that listing to work (and every business who relies on a website relies on that listing to work), you could have found yourself held hostage by a company you had already tried to cut ties with....
- So, in summary, cognitively and otherwise, I would suggest reserving your domain name with www.godaddy.com or with some other registrar, and I would suggest keeping your webhosting company separate from your registration company. Godaddy does in fact offer webhosting and website building services and again, while I hate to advocate for monopolies, my guess is they would be a safe place to co-mingle your services, but outside of that, I would suggest you keep your registrar separate from your hosting company just for healthy checks and balances.
What's up with the extensions?
- .com (pronounced "dot com") is the most common extension. Others initially included .net, .edu, and .gov (pronounced "dot net", "dot edu" and "dot gov). And then other countries started using their own since this system seemed to be US centric -- so .de for example is Deutschland (Germany) and .ru is for Russia.
- To my knowledge there is no enforcement of institution types to extension reservations. In other words a commercial, for profit company could have reserved a .edu domain. I think such a move might expose them to lawsuits for deceptive advertising if they then mis-behaved, but I'm not sure about that. I do know the United States Federal Reserve has a .gov address, and it is hardly federal even though the try to convince folks of the quasi-federal thingy but that conspiracy is so large and that fraud is so deep, trying to bust them for false advertising would be fruitless, but you get the picture. The extensions were "designed" to give a user a general idea of the nature of the resource they were calling on when looking at the name.
- If I wanted a .ru domain name, I assume I could get it even though I'm living in the US and have no commercial ties to Russia, but I really don't know the answer to that (and I'm sure it could be found with a single google search).
- The new extensions like .us and .me are, as far as I'm concerned, just methods of trying to make more money by convincing folks the someone else may poach on their name. In some cases I've seen the newer alternate extensions used creatively, but generally speaking I think it is a mistake using them because so many people are use to seeing the more traditional ones that when they saw the new ones, they may think you have left something off.
- Regarding name poaching -- I just don't see it very often anymore. There use to be ways to make money poaching names or misspelled versions of websites names, but that game has died down significantly.
- Every domain registrar offers a "private" registration system that has a premium price associated with it (it's only a few dollars extra per year). if you do not use this, three contact names and related personal information will be view-able to the public via "whois" searches -- the owner, the billing contact and the technical contact will all be viewable (and they can all be the same person). If you opt for the privacy option, it is like signing up for a PO Box or Swiss Bank Account. A proxy company approved for offering such service will be listed publicly. For basic general registration needs related to small business folks who are not trying to hide their relationship to their business, no privacy is needed or warranted. If you sign up with privacy, be sure to save all your sign up info in a place you can find it when you need it -- as making changes to domains that used privacy services is more complex.
Domain Name "connection" Options
There are quite a few options you can use to connect your domain name to the folder on the internet that contains the text files that make up your website. These include:
The Forwarding systems work consistently, but there are some drawback to those as compared to using your webhosts DNS servers, so these options should only be used when the application fits. And now for the really confusing part -- Forwarding with Masking -- if you asked someone in a vacuum how domain name redirection worked, the system for Forwarding with Masking is how you would have thought this system worked, when in fact, it is just a short cut that does not utilize the full DNS system to operate with all applicable options.
Below is a brief explanation of these three options.
DNS Servers
Forwarding with Masking
Forwarding without Masking
Summary
- Entering your own DNS server information with your domain registrar
- Using your domain registrar's DNS servers in conjunction with "Forwarding with Masking"
- Using your domain registrars DNS servers in conjunction with "Forwarding without Masking
The Forwarding systems work consistently, but there are some drawback to those as compared to using your webhosts DNS servers, so these options should only be used when the application fits. And now for the really confusing part -- Forwarding with Masking -- if you asked someone in a vacuum how domain name redirection worked, the system for Forwarding with Masking is how you would have thought this system worked, when in fact, it is just a short cut that does not utilize the full DNS system to operate with all applicable options.
Below is a brief explanation of these three options.
DNS Servers
- The most important setting is the DNS Servers (Domain Name System Servers). This Setting connects your Domain name (just a bunch of letters and numbers smashed together ) to a specific computer on the internet that contains the equivalent of the white pages of a phone book that tells anyone looking for you where to go next in their search. You always register a primary and secondary server in this configuration process. The secondary server information is used by those seeking you if the primary server is unresponsive. Typical names for dns servers might look like dns1.bobshosting.com and dns2.bobshosting.com .
Forwarding with Masking
- There are ways to "fake host" a website. That term "fake host" is mine and it is not indicative of nefarious behavior. It's just the most accurate way to describe this . As you now realize a website is just a folder on a computer connected to the internet. Let's say you owned company A, and your website was located on your webhosts computer -- www.bobshostingcompany/clients/websiteA An old fashioned trick for associating your domain name with that folder was called "forwarding with masking".
You would simple say "map" www.websiteA.com to www.bobshostingcompany/clients/websiteA and show www.websiteA.com in the address bar of the user.
Now.. for most uninitiated, this in fact is exactly how you would have thought the Domain Name System worked, right!?!? You just point your domain name to something else and you tell the the thingy to show your name in the address bar -- yes, cognitively this is the way most that are uninitiated to this system would have thought this worked, but it is not. In general you might find this to be an inexpensive way to get around paying for hosting with some of these website building companys like weebly who give you free site at xxxxx.weebly.com and they require you to pay to associate your domain name with your weebly site. Long and short of it is you can do this as a work around, but typically you will run into problems or hiccups related to search engine results and such, and you may build suspicion into your website that should not be there if you don't understand how this looks from all angles. If you think you want to use forwarding with masking, just do your research and figure out the pros and cons before doing a lot of marketing.
Forwarding without Masking
- The same forwarding solution described above works without masking. Have you ever typed in one domain name only to end up at a site with a different name? Most likely that forward was happening at the registrar level, but in fact you could have gone to a website and been redirected after arriving.
Summary
- I'm going to briefly explain the DNS System later, so there will be a little more about all of this, but the point of this sharing was to show you that there are necessary configurations that must be made after registering a domain name that are technical in nature and if you don't know what you are doing, you can really confuse yourself and others, so either educate yourself when doing this or have someone you trust help you out and make sure they set everything up on your behalf and not as a sub account on one of their systems, whatever that might be.
ICANN
So who or what is the Governing Body that has decided who can sell/distribute/register domain names?
ICANN is the magical "Corporation" that somehow chartered itself the King of list makers. I know very little about it and I'd imagine given the dollars-in versus the lack-of-work-out that it might be very unsavory at the top much like the World Soccer Federation and most of our Federal Banking systems.
As of July 19, 2016 there were 326 million registered domain names ( https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=980215 ) and for $14/year you can add one of your choosing to that list. If I recall, the price in the early 2000's was about $8/year. Inflation is a real bitch, right? I mean it's hard to grow those names and numbers because the cost of land has gone up along with the cost of water, gas and health care for all those laborers creating those names and numbers, right?!? (sarcasm for those who are confused)
- ICANN -- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICANN is the magical "Corporation" that somehow chartered itself the King of list makers. I know very little about it and I'd imagine given the dollars-in versus the lack-of-work-out that it might be very unsavory at the top much like the World Soccer Federation and most of our Federal Banking systems.
As of July 19, 2016 there were 326 million registered domain names ( https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=980215 ) and for $14/year you can add one of your choosing to that list. If I recall, the price in the early 2000's was about $8/year. Inflation is a real bitch, right? I mean it's hard to grow those names and numbers because the cost of land has gone up along with the cost of water, gas and health care for all those laborers creating those names and numbers, right?!? (sarcasm for those who are confused)
It isn't any harder now to issue some letters and numbers to aspiring web publishers than it was 20 years ago, and in fact with all the digital automation it could have only gotten a heck of a lot easier, so that raises a $4.56 billion question.. ($14x326 million)
If you thought the Jekyll Island clan had a good idea with the US Federal Reserve, you need to figure out who's collecting all this dough...
If you'd like to investigate further just google ICANN and start doing your research. It's not of great interest to me, but that transfer of power related to ICANN during the Obama to Trump turnover was a fascinating blip that I never quite understood.
For a list of accredited registrars -- https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accredited-list.html
For the wiki version of this concept --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar (wiki is not typically a great source for this type of thing as they do a good job of covering up for these types of situations and organizations)
- Who is collecting $4.56 billion for managing a limited group of domain registrars that are authorized to take reservations against a list of names and numbers that don't cost a penny?
If you thought the Jekyll Island clan had a good idea with the US Federal Reserve, you need to figure out who's collecting all this dough...
If you'd like to investigate further just google ICANN and start doing your research. It's not of great interest to me, but that transfer of power related to ICANN during the Obama to Trump turnover was a fascinating blip that I never quite understood.
For a list of accredited registrars -- https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accredited-list.html
For the wiki version of this concept --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar (wiki is not typically a great source for this type of thing as they do a good job of covering up for these types of situations and organizations)