Mastering Your Domain

An Automattic production

Presented by your Happiness Engineers, Wendy Scott and Chris Lauzon

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

• 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

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

Brief History of Domains

• RFC

• ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Domain Dangers• Registration in annual increments

• Expiration

• Redemption

• Auction

Anatomy of a Domain• Divided into 3 main parts:

• Before the first dot

• Between the dots

• After the last dot

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

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)

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)

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

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

–Jerry Seinfeld !

Seinfeld: Season 4, Episode 11 The Contest

“Yes, yes I am the master of my domain.”

Questions?

Additional Resources

Top Level Domain ListThe 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

List of Accredited RegistrarsWhen in doubt, check your registrar out.

http://www.internic.net/regist.html

ICANN Rights and Responsibilities for Domain Registrantshttps://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.”

Other Helpful ResourcesWHOIS Lookups: who.is (helpful for checking to see if a domain is available)

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ICANN Glossary: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/glossary-2014-02-04-en

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ICANN Learn: http://learn.icann.org/

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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/