A brief beginner's guide to domains

1. Mastering Your Domain
An Automattic production
Presented by your Happiness Engineers, Wendy Scott and Chris Lauzon

2. What We’ll Cover
• What a domain is and why you need one
• How domains work
• History of domains
• Anatomy of a domain
• How to get a domain
• How to choose a domain name
• Pitfalls to avoid

3. • Human-friendly name that “maps” a website to a
specific IP address that belongs to a server, where
all the files that run your website are stored
• Generally, you should get a domain if you want to
host a website on the web
• Hosting and domain registration are not the same
thing
What a domain is and why you
need one

4. This graphic shows how
domain names are converted
into IP addresses so the site
can be served.
How Domains Work
From howstuffworks.com
Propagation: the process of servers communicating changes to a domain
!
Caching: stored version of web content to serve content faster

5. Brief History of Domains
• RFC
• ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers

6. Domain Dangers
• Registration in annual increments
• Expiration
• Redemption
• Auction

7. Anatomy of a Domain
• Divided into 3 main parts:
• Before the first dot
• Between the dots
• After the last dot

8. Anatomy of a Domain
Let’s look at an example
from right to left
TOP LEVEL DOMAIN
mydomain.com
SECOND LEVEL DOMAIN
mydomain.com
SUBDOMAIN
anything.mydomain.com

9. How To Get a Domain
• Name must be unique and not already registered -
check who.is for availability
• Must register the name with a domain registrar (see
Additional Resources for a link to a list of accredited
registrars)
• Not all registrars handle every TLD
• You will have to provide contact info during registration.
This will be publicly available unless you opt for privacy
(usually at a small additional fee)

10. How to Choose a Domain
Name
• Should be at least 2 characters long and no more
than 63
• No spaces, underscores, or special characters
• Numbers and dashes are allowed, but the name
can’t start or end with a dash
• Not case sensitive (blogher.com, BlogHer.com, and
BLOGHER.COM are all the same)

11. How to Choose a Domain
Name
• Radio test
Numbers, letters, dashes: websites4u.com or is it websitesforyou.com or maybe websites-for-you.com?
Acronyms using letters that sound like other letters (c,d,e or m, n for example)
Homophones: seegate.com, seagate.com, cgate.com
Nonstandard spellings: kookiesbykaren.com
• How easy is it to spell (or misspell)?
• Length
• Beware of unintentionally awkward names:
speedofart.com- Speed of Art, not Speedo Fart
americanscrapmetal.com- American Scrap Metal, not Americans Crap Metal

12. Pitfalls to Avoid
• Choose an accredited registrar
• Make sure the domain is yours and not your developer’s, staff
member’s, or someone else who registered it on your behalf
• Make sure you can log into the registrar account and keep login
credentials in a safe place
• Always keep your contact info current with your registrar and
monitor your email account periodically for notices about your
domain
• Never ever cancel a domain or let it expire unless you never
plan to use that domain again

13. –Jerry Seinfeld
!
Seinfeld: Season 4, Episode 11
The Contest
“Yes, yes I am the master of my domain.”
Questions?

14. Additional Resources

15. Top Level Domain List
The official ICANN/IANA list:.The official ICANN/IANA list:
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
!
A list with notes an descriptions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
!
TLDs Available through WordPress.com:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/#available-domains

16. List of Accredited Registrars
When in doubt, check your registrar out.
http://www.internic.net/regist.html

17. ICANN Rights and Responsibilities
for Domain Registrants
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/benefits-2013-09-16-en
!
Please note this requirement for you, the registrant:
“You must respond to inquiries from your Registrar within fifteen
(15) days, and keep your Registrar account data current. If you
choose to have your domain name registration renew
automatically, you must also keep your payment information
current.”

18. Other Helpful Resources
WHOIS Lookups: who.is (helpful for checking to see if a domain is available)
!
ICANN Glossary: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/glossary-2014-02-04-en
!
ICANN Learn: http://learn.icann.org/
!
WordPress.com “Domains 101” Series:!
Intro: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/intro-to-custom-domains/
Mapping: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/mapping-it-out/
DNS: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/exploring-the-domain-name-system/