A domain name is the name of your website (e.g. cHosting.co.za) and is essential because the name is linked to your site’s IP address. This is how search engines find and browsers connect to your site. Before your website can go live on the internet, you will first need to buy a domain name.

While people find it easy to remember and use domain names, computers work better with numbers. For this reason, websites have both a domain name and an associated IP address (a series of numbers separated by dots, e.g. 104.22.5.32). If someone types a domain name in a search engine or clicks on a link, the device will use the Domain Name System (DNS) to find the site’s associated IP address. With these numbers, it can then locate and connect with the web server on which the website is hosted.

This dual system has been developed so that accessing the internet works fine for both people and computers.

Domains have two parts to them. The part before the dot is the domain name, (e.g. your brand name) and the part which follows the dot is the domain extension, also known as the Top Level Domain or TLD (e.g. .co.za, .com, .net, .org).

The domain extension helps put your website into a category that makes it easier for internet users to understand. They can categorise websites by location (e.g. .uk, .fr, .london), or by type of organisation (e.g. .accountant, .co, .gov) or even both (e.g. .co.za).

Today there are over 200 different TLDs available to choose from, making it easier than ever to find the perfect domain name for your brand.

Unfortunately, not. With the exception of a hyphen (e.g. my-website), the domain naming system forbids the use of either symbols or punctuation. Numbers, however, are allowed.

Registering multiple versions of your website (e.g. mywebsite.com, mywebsite.co.za, mywebsite.net) can be helpful. It can prevent other businesses from using your brand name and stop cybercriminals from setting up cloned sites with similar URLs in order to defraud your customers.

You may also find that registering different country TLDs may help your website gain more customers in those countries. For example, SA customers may prefer to buy from yourwebsite.co.za while French customers prefer to shop at yourwebsite.fr.

Today, besides international domains, you can also register more local geographic TLDs, such as .london and even show your company’s reach with TLDs like .global.

Generally, you register a domain for either one or two years. After this point, you can either renew your registration or let it expire. If you need to keep your domain name, it is vital that you do not let your registration expire as this would allow someone else to buy it. To protect you from this, we set up auto-renewals so that your registration will continue uninterrupted. However, you can always turn off auto-renewal if you no longer want the domain name and wish to let it expire.

If you let the domain name expire and then change your mind, you would need to register it again quickly before someone else.